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VOLCANOES 



AND EARTHQUAKES 



A popular account of their nature, causes, effects and 
geographical distribution, from personal observation in 
the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands, Japan, Iceland, 
the Mediterranean Basin, Spain and the United States 



/ 



BY 



SAMUEL KNEELAND AM M D 

Author of 
Wonders of the Yosemite Valley and of California 
An American in Iceland 

and others 






"C'est ce que j'ai vu — le temoin au juge " — J Barrande 



&?&?£ 



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V MAR~31I888 > / 



BOSTON 
D LOTHROP COMPANY 

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 



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Copyright, 
by 
D. Lothrop Company. 



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¥9 



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IN MEMORIAM. 



GEORGE MANN CURTIS: 



MY COMPANION IN MOST OF THE SCENES HERE DESCRIBED; 

WHOSE INEXHAUSTIBLE GOOD NATURE, 

WHOSE APPRECIATION OF THE GRAND AND BEAUTIFUL, 

AND WHOSE EVER-PRESENT WIT AND REFINEMENT, 

MADE HIM A WELCOME GUEST IN MANY LANDS, 

THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, 



BY THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



The following pages are not intended as a scientific text-book, nor for ex- 
perts in the difficult and hotly-contested theories of volcanic and earthquake 
disturbances. They are prepared for popular reading, and seek to give such 
information on these subjects, now of universal interest, as every liberally 
educated person may desire to possess. 

Much of the material used is the result of my own observation in the coun- 
tries described, and partakes largely of personal adventure ; the remainder is 
condensed and simplified from special books and journals in many languages. 
The main idea of the narrative has been to save the reader the time and labor 
of wading through or skimming over thousands of printed pages scattered over 
the civilized world during the last half-century ; attempting for his mental 
advantage what the pharmacist does in concentrating his watery decoctions 
into a solid extract for curative purposes. 

I have taken up volcanic countries in the order which seemed best calcu- 
lated to lead from the simple to the complex, and have grouped under each 
whatever I had to say about it, without reference to sequence of similar sub- 
jects in other chapters. Though this may be deemed objectionable by the 
scientific reader, I consider it the most desirable way to present to the popular 
mind the facts of what I name " volcanic geography," and to show that the 
causes of the earthquake are world-wide. 

In the final chapter of each part are given the conclusions, deducible from 
the preceding ones, which I believe are admitted, by most scientists in both 
hemispheres, to represent our knowledge up to the present time. These, of 
course, are liable and even certain to be modified by subsequent investi- 
gations. 

The illustrations are from photographs and drawings made on the spot, and 
will render plain many points which words cannot faithfully describe. 

A copious index will enable the reader to turn at once to any desired 
subject. S. K. 

Boston, Janua?y, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

lavas. Page. 

Nature and characters. — Varieties. — Composition. — Movements. — Make a fertile soil n 

CHAPTER II. 

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. — KILAUEA. 

Volcanic characters of the group. — A family party. — Honolulu to HilO. — Ride through a 
tropical forest. — The Volcano House. — Night scene. — A sulphur bath. — Descent of 
the crater of Kilauea. — Its situation. — Almost level floor. — Getting warm under foot. 

— The ''lake of fire." — An awful sight. — Volcanic manifestations. — Sketch of its erup- 
tions. — Display in 1840. — The Goddess Pele 17 

CHAPTER III. 

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. — MAUNA LOA. 

Kapapala. — Earthquake and mud eruption of 1868. — Waiohinu. — Insect pests. — Eruptions 
of Mauna Loa. — Eruption of 1872. — Activity of Kilauea at same time. — Camp on the 
mountain. — Description of the lava fountain and flow. — Ice at the summit. — Changes 
in the floor. — Great flow of 1852 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, HALEAKALA, THE MOON. 

Island of Maui. — Kona, Hawaii. — Waihee. — Wailuku valley. — Geese without webs. — 
Rain and drought. — Ride to the summit of Haleakala. — Hard climbing. — Labor school. 

— Size of crater. — Its walls and cinder cones. —Night upon the summit. — Magnificence 
of moon and cloud effects. — Volcanic scenery of the moon. — Huge crater of Copernicus. 

— Volcanoes without water 45 

CHAPTER V. 

ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 

Extinct craters and old lava streams. — Thingvalla and its chasms. — Volcanic upheaval on a 
large scale. — Long line of submarine fissure. — Skaptar jokul. — Hekla. — Its historic 
eruptions. — Scenery of desolation. — The geysers. — Great Geyser. — The Strokr, and 

what it did for us. — Explanation of geyser action 56 

v 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 

Gulf of Naples an immense crater. — Ancient and modern Vesuvius. — Recent eruptions. — 
Outbreak of 1872. — Ascent of the mountain by carriage and rail. — Observatory. — The 
crater by night. — On the brink. — Trembling of cone from swash of lava, and fre- 
quent volcanic bombs. — Difficulty of return from darkness. — Chemical composition of 
lavas 70 

CHAPTER VII. 

ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

Interest of Stromboli. — Theory of volcanoes derived from its study. — Picturesque railway 
to Catania. — Etna. — Immense lava flows. — Varied outline, depressions, and summit. — 
Monti Rossi.— Difficulty of ascent. — Observatory. — Magnificent view from summit. — 
Great eruptions of 1669, 1852-53, 1865, 1874, and 1879. — Crater in 1882. — Age and ori- 
gin. — Fertility of lava soils, and utility of volcanoes 90 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. — TAAL, MAYON AND TIBI GEYSERS. 

Volcano of Taal. — Volcano of Mayon. — Its symmetrical shape. — In eruption for more 
than a year. — Beautiful both by night and day. — Native fear of it. — Various unsatisfac- 
tory attempts to ascend it. — Its chief eruptions. — Catastrophe of 1814. — Geysers at 
Tibi. — The red and the white cones. — An uncanny spot. — Silicious incrustations. — 
Usual causes in 

CHAPTER IX. 

JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

Fujiyama. — Geysers and mineral springs. — Symmetry and sacred character. — Its ascent for 
the first time in winter. — A perilous undertaking. — Krakatoa, Java. — Greatest eruption 
of modern times. — New Zealand. — Destruction of the famous geysers, and the pink and 
white terraces. — Earthquakes precede the volcanic disturbances 125. 

CHAPTER X. 

NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 

Four principal theories. — Secular cooling of the globe. — Consequent stress from contrac- 
tion. — Mountain chains and dislocations. — Mallet's theory of a cooling, shrinking crust 
on a hot centre. — Transformation of motion into heat. — Lines of weakness. — Occluded 
gases. — Agency of steam. — Linear arrangement of volcanoes. — Number of volcanoes on 
the globe. — Production of fissures. — Barometric changes. — The potentially liquid con- 
dition. — Conclusions 136 



CONTENTS. vii 

CHAPTER XI. 

EARTHQUAKES. — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

Most common in volcanic regions. — May occur in non-volcanic districts. — In Asia Minor, 
England, Atlantic coast of Africa, New England, California, Spain and the Mississippi Val- 
ley. — Theories. — Dr. Young in 1807. — Mallet in 1846. — A wave of elastic compression. 

— Velocity of transit. — Different movements. — Origin. — Marine earthquakes . . 145 

CHAPTER XII. 

FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

Theory of displacements. — Fracture from stress, contraction, or subsidence. — Faults. — May 
and do occur everywhere. — Elevations and foldings of the crust. — Instances of subsidence 
after earthquakes, in many parts of the world. — A volcanic vent no safeguard against an 
earthquake. — Earthquakes in Iceland. — Volcanic fissures in the moon. — Charleston, S. C. 

— Other earthquake disturbances and subsidences. — Barometric changes as causes 153. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 

Early records. — In 1645. — ^ n 1863, a most destructive earthquake. — In July, 1880, a three 
days' disturbance. — Great destruction of life and property. — Description by an eye 
witness. — Effect on man and animals. — Premonitory symptoms. — Direction of the 
waves, and effects on buildings. — Explanation of origin 166 

CHAPTER XIV. 

MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. 

Incidents and accidents. — The cottage more safe than the palace ; the boat on the river than 
a carriage on land. — The best way to build houses there. — Japanese earthquakes in 
Tokio. — Prof. Milne's book and opinions. — Explosive effects as a cause . . . . 178 

CHAPTER XV. 

ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

Island of Ischia. — Bathing establishments. — Delightful summer resort for Neapolitans. — 
Earthquake of 1883 at night. — Deep seated and extended. — Great destruction of build- 
ings and loss of life.— Worst at Casamicciola. — Made up of the tufas and lavas of the 
volcano Epomeo, an extinct crater. — Probably from subsidence. — Absence of volcanic 
phenomena. — Earthquake in Southern Spain in 1884. — Barometric changes. — Result 
of fracture in the mountain masses, and a weak coast line. — Northern Italy and South- 
ern France. — Probably from fracture in the Apennines and Mediterranean basin, in 
1887 187 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. — THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY AND THE ATLANTIC SEABOARD. 

New England earthquakes for two hundred and fifty years. — Shock at Panama in 1882. — 
Inauspicious for an isthmus canal. — In Mississippi Valley. — The Charleston earthquake 
of 1886. — Severest and most extensive in United States. — Surface indications. — Direc- 
tion. — Probably deep-seated, and connected with a dislocation in the Appalachian range, 
and a displacement of the coastal plain. — Perhaps associated with subsidence in the 
lowest strata. — Speculations 199 

CHAPTER XVII. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

Similarity of volcanic and earthquake laws of occurrence. — Sensations during an earth- 
quake. — Feeling of utter helplessness. — Not mysterious, though they cannot be foreseen 
nor prevented. — Not wholly bad. — Effects of a great cosmic force, which we call 
"gravitation." — The future of our earth and the solar system, as deduced from the study 
of the moon. — A French speculation. — Law everywhere reigneth 206 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Pa<;b. 
AN ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS FrOtltis. 

A LAVA FLOW 1 3 

KILAUEA IN ERUPTION 23 

ERUPTION OF STROKR 65 

CRATER OF VESUVIUS 7 1 

RAGGED LAVA 75 

ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS, 1880 8 1 

DIAGRAM OF THE CRATER 83 

ON THE SUMMIT OF MT. VESUVIUS 85 

SUMMIT OF ETNA, MARCH, 1 88 2 I OO 

VIEW OF ETNA 107 

MAYON 113 

A STREET OF MANILA 1 69 

CHURCH AT MANILA 1 73 

AT LUZON, MANILA 181 

PICCOLA SENTINELLA AT CASSAMICCIOLA, 1883 " 189 



VOLCANOES 
AND EARTHQUAKES 



CHAPTER I. 



LAVAS. 



Nature and characters. — Varieties. — Composition. — Movements. — Make a fertile soil. 

I DESIRE in this volume to relate my experience in vol- 
canic countries, in the shape of a personal narrative, from 
notes taken on the spot. In this way the reader may be enabled 
to form a better idea of the volcanic phenomena, as well as of 
local peculiarities, and in a far more acceptable and intelligible 
form than by a didactic treatise. Only the countries that I 
have visited will be specially described. These, however, com- 
prise Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, and will be suf- 
ficient to furnish ample materials for a popular explanation. I 
do not pretend to settle any of the many disputed points in the 
geology and physics of the globe ; I simply wish to follow the 
motto of Barrande, placed on the title-page : " C'est ce que j'ai vu 
— le temoin au juge." In other words, I merely describe what 
I have seen, and leave the explanation to competent judges. 
A few explanatory words relative to the properties and varie- 



! 2 LA VAS. 

ties of lava seem desirable before proceeding to the detailed 
narrative. 

Lavas are the more or less fluid matters poured out from 
volcanic vents in a glowing, highly-heated condition derived 
from melted or softened rocks far below the surface of the 
earth. They resemble the slags and clinkers around our fur- 
naces and kilns, and, like them, are composed of various stony 
materials of different degrees of hardness and roughness. 

According to Prof. Judd, oxygen constitutes nearly one half 
the weight of all lavas, combined with other elements in the 
form of oxides ; silicon forms about one quarter, and aluminium 
one tenth of most lavas ; magnesium, calcium, iron, sodium, and 
potassium, in varying proportions, make up the other mate- 
rials ; silica or silicic acid forms the greater part of their mass : 
from one half to four fifths ; this, acting as an acid, unites with 
other bases, making silicates. Those having the largest amount 
of silica are called acid lavas, and those with less silica and 
more bases, basic lavas : the latter are usually much the darkest 
in color, and the heaviest, like the basalts ; the former being 
generally comprised under trachytes : as the iron in them es- 
capes, they assume a reddish or brownish tint. Basic lavas are 
more easily fusible, and, in their natural state, largely crystalline ; 
when subsequently melted they form a glass. When a lava 
mass cools rapidly near the surface, it becomes a volcanic glass 
called obsidian ; when cooled slowly and at great depths, and 
under immense pressure, the mass becomes crystalline. 

There are three kinds of lava : 

I. Smooth, with a glassy crust, which has cooled into all 
imaginable folded and twisted forms: seen on an immense 
scale in the bottom of the crater of Kilauea in the Sandwich 



~/~ 




LA VAS. 



15 



Islands, where it is known as pahoehoe. This is the most com- 
mon, and occurs when the flow passes over rocks or dry soil at 
a gentle slope. 

II. Scoriaceous or clinker lava, rough and fragmentary, found 
where the stream has passed through woods, or where its course 
has been impeded by obstacles or inequalities of the ground, or 
where the heat causes the explosion of steam in former caverns 
over which it passes. 

III. Spongy lava, whose terrible roughness and hardness 
must be seen and felt to be appreciated : its jagged mass is 
broken into needles, ridges and crests, like the surface ice of 
a glacier, or the slag of a furnace. This appears to occur when 
the flow meets with an impediment which gives way just as the 
lava is granulated, rolling the spongy mass over and raising huge 
piles from which the liquid portion drains away, — where it has 
very suddenly cooled, — or has been broken up after consolida- 
tion by subsequent underground flows. It is not always easy 
to draw the line between the second and third forms. 

Lava is very capricious in its movements : sometimes over- 
whelming everything, at others turned aside by small obstacles ; 
sometimes forming huge bubbles, which remain as caverns as 
large as an ordinary room, at others tunnels, bridges, peaks and 
plateaus ; but everywhere, when recent, black, hard, without 
water, hot from the sun, and indescribably dismal. The decom- 
posed lava, in a temperate and moist climate, makes a fertile 
soil which is soon overgrown by vegetation ; the smooth lava 
is too hard for plant life except in the cracks. 

Lava, wherever occurring, presents the same general char- 
acters. I have seen that of the Sandwich Islands boiling in its 
fury in the Lake of Kilauea, and have travelled over hundreds of 



1 6 LAVAS. 

miles of its hardened crust and volcanic sand. From Reykjavik 
to Thingvalla, and thence to the geysers of Iceland, the scenery 
is almost entirely of the same character, but doubly desolate 
and black from the absence of vegetation. I have dodged and 
afterward collected the fiery bombs from the crater of Vesu- 
vius ; I have gathered many specimens from Etna, Fujiyama, 
the Philippine and Javan archipelagoes ; but all present the 
same general appearances. 

I shall briefly state the principal theories of volcanic and 
earthquake action, with the arguments pro and con, and en- 
deavor to bring some order out of the chaos which seems to 
exist in the treatises to which non-scientific readers have access 
in our magazines and public libraries. Any unprejudiced mind, 
with a fair knowledge of physics and geology, can thus form a 
satisfactory idea of the grand, but simple, principles which, I 
believe, underlie these phenomena of world-wide disturbance. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. KILAUEA. 

Volcanic characters of the group. — A family party. — Honolulu to Hilo. — Ride through a 
tropical forest. — The Volcano House. — Night scene. — A sulphur bath. — Descent of the 
crater of Kilauea — Its situation. — Almost level floor. — Getting warm under foot. — The 
"lake of fire." — An awful sight. — Volcanic manifestations. — Sketch of its eruptions. — 
Display in 1840. — The Goddess Pele. 

THE group of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands has been 
produced by volcanic forces. They all present magnifi- 
cent proofs of the intensity of these forces in past ages ; and 
from the moment of landing in Honolulu, all over the island of 
Oahu, and in the neighboring islands of Kauai and Maui, the 
eye can hardly rest on a landscape or a shore which is not 
the work or the modification of lava streams. Yet as there are 
except in Hawaii, the largest and -most southeasterly of the 
group, no existing active volcanoes or any tradition of such, 
it will be best to proceed at once to Kilauea, on the side of 
Mauna Loa, for the first volcanic experience. 

Our family party, three middle-aged gentlemen, old travellers r 
and two young ladies, set sail for Hilo, Hawaii, the gateway 
of this volcano. The sea is generally rough in these island 
channels, and the steamer is small, inconvenient, crowded, and 
overrun with vermin large and small, creeping and flying, biting 
and stinging. The most comfortable place, therefore, is on 
deck, day and night, even in spite of spray and rain. 

17 



j 8 THE HA W All AN ISLANDS. 

Lahaina, on the island of Maui, was once an important 
whaling station, but is now decayed and almost deserted. 
Touching here to take on passengers, and obtain a supply of 
delicious grapes, bananas, and other tropical fruits, we stretched 
across to Hawaii, stopping in Captain Cook's bay and Kona, 
then passing to the north around the island, and thence south 
to Hilo. 

On the northwest shore of Hawaii are deep ravines with 
numerous cascades and waterfalls, utilized for sugar and saw 
mills, and floating logs down the mountains, which have been 
much changed by the action of the elements ; these water-worn 
valleys are of great depth, often very fertile, and afford some of 
the wildest and most beautiful scenery in the world. The sea 
has also modified the coast by its incessant breakers ; the shore 
is generally barren, and so rugged that there may be no landing 
place for twenty miles. The great volcanoes of Mauna Loa and 
Mauna Kea, along whose sides we steamed for many hours, rise 
to a height of fourteen thousand feet. Their immense mass, the 
product of their many lava flows, has such a gentle slope that 
one is deceived as to their height ; their apparently smooth sur- 
faces, clothed high with vegetation, are in reality much broken 
and often very difficult of access. The rain, which seems con- 
tinually falling on their summits, courses down the slopes, wear- 
ing away valleys which extend very high up, and are cut by 
other valleys at right angles, similarly produced. These water- 
courses reduce the sides in many places to sharp-edged but- 
tresses, which form some of the most characteristic scenery, 
covered as they are in the older islands, with verdure* to the 
very top. 

Starting from Hilo on horseback, with a guide, we found the 



THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 



19 



first seven miles of the road good, the country fertile, with 
here and there a thatched house, and now and then a native, 
but the signs of humanity were few. Arriving at a thick 
cocoa-nut grove, tenanted by a native family, we saw for the 
first time the old primitive costume in a venerable man who 
wished us aloha : an untranslatable salutation combining a 
cheerful good-day and a kind greeting ; he offered us water and 
wished us a pleasant and safe ride through the wilderness of 
tropical verdure, alternating with barren lava. This native was 
of the color of mahogany, and was entirely nude except a 
narrow strip of cloth around the hips ; the malo. Our native 
guide was named " Opa," which we anglicized into " Scissors ; " 
he spoke English very well, having served for years on an 
American whaling ship. 

The comfort and convenience of such a trip depend very 
much on your guide, as you are completely at his mercy ; ours 
was a faithful fellow, who afterward died of leprosy, which 
is very common in the islands : a fatal, but, it is believed, 
a non-contagious disease. [I will say here that we met with 
no attempts at imposition on the part of the natives ; for a 
fair price they always placed at our disposal the products of 
their taro patches, cocoa-nut groves, and banana plantations.] 
The vegetation was quite new and characteristic, largely made 
up of tree-ferns and screw-palms, with intertwining creepers, 
many with high-colored, but scentless flowers. Of birds we saw 
none except a few hawk-like owls which prey upon the rats, 
mice, and lizards ; these latter are the only reptiles found on the 
islands, and are pretty, harmless, lively creatures. • The decom- 
posed lava made a very fair road, though here and there were 
long smooth, glassy stretches crushing under foot like thin ice. 



20 THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 

This alternated with miles of rough jagged lava, a scene of utter 
desolation, reminding one of the slag of a gigantic iron furnace. 

At noon we reached the " Half-Way House," a native hut 
made of grasses, straw and leaves of the screw-palm, where we 
were surprised to find an old-fashioned four-post bedstead for 
weary travellers of aristocratic habits who may be too tired to 
proceed farther. Being neither the one nor the other, after 
dining on chicken, bread and tea, and resting an hour on a wide 
shelf covered with mats, we pushed on seventeen miles farther, 
passing many herds of wild cattle, reaching the Volcano House 
at sunset. 

Tired as we were, we looked upon this grass house as a de- 
lightful haven of rest. It has now been replaced by a modern, 
more sumptuous, and far less romantic hotel, of which I have 
nothing to say. The girls, whom we called the " Lambs," 
cramped from the unaccustomed exercise, had to be taken from 
their horses. This grass house, owned by a native and kept by 
a Chinaman, was very cosy. One does not know until he travels 
in these out-of-the-way places, how little it takes to make one 
comfortable, and how much of what is considered indispensable 
for civilized life is really unnecessary luxury. One of the great 
lessons taught by travelling is to be content and even happy 
with a little : grumbling not only sours one's own temper, but 
irritates those who are not to blame for not supplying impossi- 
bilities. 

The last half of the ride was hard from its steepness, mud and 
clinkers, but all fatigue was for the time forgotten as we neared 
the crater, and came in sight of the ever-rising fumes of the 
volcano. All around the ground was smoking and steaming with 
sulphurous and watery vapors, giving unmistakable indications 



THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 2 I 

of the fire raging beneath us. The sunset was ve-ry grand over 
Mauna Loa, for the depth and variety of the colors, the huge 
slumbering mountain above us, and the deep lava pit below. 
The house was on the very edge of the crater, and from its 
porch you looked directly into it. The fires after dark, at the 
distance of about three miles, resembled the flames issuing from 
the chimneys of immense furnaces. The night was ¥ery dark, 
the fires glowing, ever changing, but noiseless, the stillness 
broken only by an occasional crackling, and the hissing of the 
steam from crevices near the house. 

The hotel, one of the half-dozen known only to the entire 
island group at that time (1872), was made of thatch. It was 
impervious to wind and rain, was comfortably furnished, and 
well supplied with eatables and drinkables at fair prices, con- 
sidering the difficulty of their transport. The only article 
which was not good was the water; this was scanty and reddish, 
with a decided flavor of musty straw, most of it being caught 
in an old canoe set under the eaves to receive the drippings 
from the thatched roof : I think our tired animals did not get any. 

There was a rousing fire in the open fireplace, for the night 
was cold, as we were over four thousand feet above the sea. 
The parlor was fitted up with flowers, evergreens, pictures, books, 
and everything to make it pleasant : a few large roaches and 
spiders — natural enemies — and small scorpions, enjoyed the 
comforts with us. They did not offer to come near our persons, 
though one naturally looks with aversion and suspicion on such 
companions. The neat fence was bordered with wild roses in 
bloom, and it was altogether a charming spot. 

Near by on one side was an immense bank of sulphur, from 
which the fumes were constantly escaping, with hot sulphurous 



22 THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 

vapor which one of our party utilized as a bath, in a hut made 
for the purpose. He was nearly baked alive, as he was im- 
prisoned in a box, with only his head out. The native attend- 
ant, not understanding English, even of his emphatic kind, 
mistook his cries for a demand for more heat, which he very soon 
got ; at last he succeeded in getting out by a vigorous use of 
his lungs and his fiercest expression of countenance. He had 
been sitting over a hole evidently communicating with the fires 
below, and was of the firm opinion that it was a mistake made 
on purpose. On the other side of our house was a deep pit 
from which a hot damp breath was constantly escaping, and all 
about us the ground was steaming, indicating that the whole 
locality was underlaid by fire. 

After breakfast, next morning, taking lunch and water with 
us, we started for the descent of the crater. Though the sun 
was hot, a strong breeze enabled us to make, without great 
fatigue, what otherwise would have been, and generally is, a hard 
tramp. We felt rather stiff at first, having to descend by 
long steps an almost perpendicular wall of lava, two hundred 
feet high, overgrown with shrubbery, and evidently very old. 

Reaching the lava proper, we descended by a gentle slope 
some hundred feet more, to the bottom of the crater. This a 
few years ago was a boiling cauldron; and even now through 
the cracks the heat and sulphur incrustations made it evident 
that we were walking on a shell that might at any moment be 
broken up and precipitate us into a lake of molten lava. The 
lava was sometimes ragged and cracked, at others twisted into all 
imaginable shapes. The best thing I could compare it to was 
a great mass of black molasses candy, which flowed slowly, hard- 
ened, and remained in whatever form the cooling process left it. 



THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, 25 

This crater, on the floor of which we stood, was then solid at 
the surface, except at the extreme southern end. It is nine 
miles in circumference ; nine times as large as Boston Common ; 
and during the first third of this century was a great sea of 
boiling lava. The walls are from six hundred to nine hundred 
feet high at most places, and everything^ everywhere, is lava. 
The crater is a depression in the side of Mauna Loa, about four 
thousand feet above the sea ; the distance from it to the sum- 
mit of the volcano is twenty miles. The mountain, which rises 
to the height of fourteen thousand feet, and the diameter of 
whose base is at least sixty miles, is not steep, and the ascent is 
so gradual that you would hardly think you were ascending very 
much till you get near the top. The amount of material thrown 
out is almost beyond belief ; the islands, in fact, — and Hawaii 
is about as large as Connecticut, — are composed, at any rate 
above the water, wholly of lava. 

The walking was generally easy, as the floor was smooth, and 
covered with a thin glassy crust, breaking under foot with the 
feeling and sound of thin ice, preventing slipping, but very de- 
structive to shoes. The smoking part of the crater was some 
three miles off, and we arrived in its neighborhood toward noon. 

Before getting to the real crater, we had to pass close to two 
small cones. These threw out choking sulphurous fumes, and the 
heat in the air and under foot was all that we cared to endure. 
There was no noise, but simply a small jet of gases and vapors 
from a cracked cone about fifteen feet high, which, as we quickly 
passed, we could see was red-hot on the inside. After hurry- 
ing through this hot smoke, we reached the " Lake of Fire " 
(Hale-mau-mau, the " Everlasting House M ), at that time the only 
active portion of the volcano. The sharp and brittle fragments 



26 THE HAWAIIAN ISIANDS. 

over which we scrambled were only two weeks old, and climbing 
up the steep ridge of hot and crumbling ashes, we instinctively 
held on to each other, and looked down. It was the most awful 
sight I ever beheld. 

Imagine an irregularly circular cauldron, with an estimated 
depth of two hundred feet and one thousand feet across (estima- 
ted only). At the bottom of this a waving mass of fluid lava, 
rolled and swelled like the undulations of a sea of melted lead,, 
for the most part covered with a sulphur-colored scum. This 
was gently heaving and falling ; on the sides, at the base, were 
large caverns, into which the lava dashed like thickened waves,, 
the cavern sides and the surges red-hot. In the middle of this 
lake was a large mass of boiling blood-red liquid, from the centre 
of which, from time to time, were thrown up jets of dull red lava, 
about forty feet high and three feet in diameter, falling back 
with a heavy fearful " thud," indicative of its weight and density. 

It was a magnificent sight, and well repaid us for a voyage 
of six thousand miles to see. The heat, the sulphur fumes, 
the dull roarings, the quivering ridges, the horrid color of this 
" lake of fire," had a strange fascination, luring one to leap 
into its unearthly and beautiful embrace. Within six feet 
of us was a red-hot cone, covered outside with incrustations of 
sulphur, roaring in our very faces, and revealing to us the hol- 
low, fragile, and treacherous character of the rim on which we 
had prostrated ourselves. The fascination took away all sense 
of fear and of danger; a feeling I had once before experienced 
on the bloody battlefield of Newbern, N. C, in 1862 ; the ter- 
rible scenes of the battlefield and the awful splendor of the 
fiery lake awoke in me the same sensation of self-forgetfulness 
and afterward of horror. Remaining some fifteen minutes,. 



THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 27 

until a sudden change in the wind drove the sulphurous fumes 
toward us, we were reluctantly compelled to retreat. We did 
not realize, until we were at a safe distance, to what a terrible 
death the falling in of this portion of the edge would have 
consigned us. The walls are constantly changing from this 
cause. We had, in fact, though feeling secure in the presence 
of our guide, been stationed on a thin, fragile crust, over a red- 
hot lava-filled cavern. So well do the guides know the symp- 
toms of danger, that I think no accident has ever happened at 
this crater. 

The state of things we witnessed they call " not active." 
You may imagine, perhaps, the infernal scene when this pot 
overflows its rim. This it did two weeks before and two weeks 
after our visit. We had walked over a lava crust which had 
hardly become solid, and was not cool. When the whole bot- 
tom of the great crater is sending up its glowing jets, as it has 
done within fifty years, and is covered with a sea of liquid fire, 
the sight must be terribly grand. 

After partaking of a frugal lunch, with most welcome water, 
— for our thirst from the heat and the sulphur was great, — we 
walked leisurely back. When we reached the grass-covered 
lava, near the foot of the upper terrace, — for the ascent was 
difficult, — we found many so-called huckleberries (o/ielos), look- 
ing more like cranberries ; juicy, but insipid, though excellent 
quenchers of thirst. We were not so tired the next day but 
that we took a horseback ride of seventeen miles, and one of 
twenty the day after, to reach the southern part of the island 
on our way to Maui ; the greater part of these journeys being 
over very rough roads and through a most desolate region, 
often visited by sudden drenching showers, against which a 



2 8 THE HAWAIIAN ISIANDS. 

pretty good protection was afforded by our waterproofs strapped, 
when not required, conveniently behind our saddles. 

This largest active crater in the world, by the side of which 
Vesuvius is utterly insignificant, affords to the lover of the 
grand in nature an easily accessible, always active display of 
volcanic phenomena. It varies very much in intensity, but is 
ever more or less active, and appears to be independent of the 
eruptions of Mauna Loa, in whose side it is merely a small 
depression. About sixty years ago it was, in its whole extent, 
a raging sea of fire. In 1840 it was filled for five hundred to 
six hundred feet with molten lava, the immense weight of which 
broke through a subterranean passage of twenty-seven miles, 
and reached the sea, forty miles distant, in two days. It flowed 
for three weeks. The stream, where it fell into the sea, was half 
a mile wide, heating the water twenty miles from land, and, of 
course, killing multitudes of fishes. An eye-witness of this 
mighty flow of 1840 says : — 

" When the torrent of fire precipitated itself into the ocean, 
the scene assumed a character of terrific and indescribable 
grandeur. The magnificence of destruction was never more 
perceptibly displayed than when these antagonistic elements 
met in deadly strife. The mightiest of earth's magazines of 
fire poured forth its burning billows to meet the mightiest of 
oceans. For two score miles it came rolling, tumbling, swelling 
forward, an awful agent of death. Rocks melted like w r ax in 
its path ; forests crackled and blazed before its fervent heat ; 
the works of man were to it but as a scroll in the flames. 
Imagine Niagara's stream, above the brink of the Falls, with its 
dashing, whirling, madly-raging waters hurrying on to their 
plunge, instantaneously converted into fire; a gory-hued river of 



THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 29 

fused minerals; volumes of hissing steam arising; smoke curl- 
ing upward from ten thousand vents, which give utterance to 
as many deep-toned mutterings, and sullen, confined clamorings ; 
gases detonating and shrieking as they burst from their hot 
prison-house ; the heavens lurid with flame ; the atmosphere 
dark and oppressive; the horizon murky with vapors, and 
^leaminof with the reflected contest. . . . Such was the 
scene as the fiery cataract, leaping a precipice of fifty feet, 
poured its flood upon the ocean. The old line of coast, a mass 
of compact indurated lava, whitened, cracked and fell. The 
waters recoiled, and sent forth a tempest of spray ; they foamed 
and dashed around and over the melted rock, they boiled 
with. the heat, and the roar of the conflicting agencies srew 
fiercer and louder. The reports of the exploding gases were 
distinctly heard twenty-five miles distant, and were likened to a 
whole broadside of heavy artillery. Streaks of the intensest 
light glanced like lightning in all directions ; the outskirts of 
the burning lava as it fell, cooled by the shock, were shivered 
into millions of fragments, and scattered by the strong wind in 
sparkling showers far into the country. For three successive 
weeks the volcano disgorged an uninterrupted burning tide, 
with scarcely any diminution, into the ocean. On either side, 
for twenty miles, the sea became heated, and with such rapidity 
that on the second day of the junction of the lava with the 
ocean, fishes came ashore dead in great numbers, at a point 
fifteen miles distant. Six weeks later, at the base of the hills, 
the water continued scalding hot, and sent forth steam at every 
wash of the waves." 

This crater was thought to be the favorite residence of the 
heathen goddess Pele, and the various eruptions were believed 



30 



THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 



to be the demonstrations of her anger. There are many curious 
and interesting traditions connected with Kilauea, which will be 
found in the volumes of Jarvis, Ellis, and other writers on the 
Sandwich Islands. " Pele's hair " is the name given to glassy 
threads of lava which, spun out by the wind and the fiery blasts, 
cover every object near the crater. This " hair " is so light as to 
be carried by the wind to Hilo, thirty miles distant. I saw there 
a bird's nest, containing eggs, which had been constructed of 
this glassy, thread-like lava. Such a one, possibly the same, was 
exhibited from these islands at the Philadelphia Centennial 
Exposition in 1876. 

Kapiolani, a high and rich princess of Hawaii, gave the death- 
blow to the Pele superstition by going, in 1825, to the crater of 
Kilauea, with numerous attendants, and, as a Christian convert, 
defying in public the power and wrath of the goddess. This 
journey of one hundred miles she made on foot, horses being 
then unknown on these islands. The native mind was thor- 
oughly convinced by her sincerity and boldness, and by the 
absence of the expected deadly results. 

Though the royal family embraced Christianity many years 
ago, their faith was not of a character which profoundly in- 
fluenced their lives. When Kamehameha the Fifth died in 1872, 
it was stated that he was not wholly free from the superstitions 
of his ancestors. It was common talk in Honolulu that he 
often consulted and implicitly obeyed an old sorceress of his 
household, and, though professing to be a Christian, held com- 
munion with the shark-god and other heathen divinities. If 
the Honolulu papers are to be believed, after his death and 
before burial, many of the old horrible and disgusting heathen 
practices were revived within the inclosure of the palace grounds.. 



THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 



31 



In March, 1887, news was received from Honolulu that the 
Princess Like Like, the youngest sister of the king, had vol- 
untarily starved herself to death to appease the anger of the 
goddess Pele, which was supposed to be manifested by the great 
eruption of Mauna Loa, and which required as atonement a 
victim of the royal blood. It is most likely that the sorcerers 
effected this sacrifice of the accomplished princess by craft and 
cruelty. By a singular coincidence, when her death was 
announced, the eruption ceased, thus confirming the people in 
their old belief, much to the. advantage of the sorcerers. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. MAUNA LOA. 

Kapapala. — Earthquake and mud eruption of 1868. — Waiohinu. — Insect pests. — Eruptions 
of Mauna Loa. — Eruption of 1872. — Activity of Kilauea at same time. — Camp on the 
mountain. — Description of the lava fountain and flow. — Ice at the summit. — Changes 
in the floor. — Great flow of 1852. 

AFTER leaving Kilauea, we took a trip over the old fields 
of lava, eruptions of various ages, to the sea, on the 
southern part of the island, in the district of Ka-u, a distance 
of about forty miles. Our first point to visit was the cattle 
ranch of Mr. Richardson, an American, whose hospitality was 
as unbounded as his words were few. 

The first eight miles were so rough, and the clinkers so hard 
and irregular, that the horses could not go faster than a walk. 
Everything around was lava; some new and rough, others 
smoother and covered with vegetation more or less dense, 
according to its age and consequent decomposition ; but gener- 
ally the country was of extreme blackness, desolate, and waterless. 
Kapapala, in the great eruption of 1868, was so thoroughly 
shaken by the accompanying earthquakes that every stone wall 
was leveled, the cisterns cracked, the house moved from its foun- 
dations, and everything in it in the shape of crockery broken, 
except a pitcher and a cup, which the proprietor proudly shows 
as proof, to use his own expression, that " times were pretty 

lively then." 

32 



THE HA WAIT AN ISLANDS. 



33 



At almost any time during an eruption in the stillness of the 
night may be heard the grumblings and felt the quiverings from 
the fiery cauldron which, no doubt, is always boiling under the 
volcano on whose sides we are travelling. On the night of our 
visit a small earthquake gave the house a thump, but it was all 
over before we could get to the door, toward which we all natu- 
rally hastened. It seemed as if some Titan had thrown a huge 
rock at the bottom of the house, and had not missed his aim. 
The sensation must be experienced to be understood ; it cannot 
be described. The city of Charleston, S. C, in December, 1886, 
had ample opportunity to study earthquake shocks. 

Next day we rode by the famous mud eruption near Kapapala, 
one of the disasters of the eruption of 1868. It occurred in a 
charming valley, verdant with groves of trees and rich grass, 
where thousands of cattle and goats were grazing, and where 
w T ere several huts occupied by the native herdsmen. During the 
earthquake alluded to, there burst out, from a rent in the side of 
this valley, with a great noise, a stream of red mud and water, 
with many large stones. These materials were driven, by the 
explosion, fully three miles. So great was its force that none 
fell on the ground within a distance of one third of a mile ; 
it extended, three miles from the opening, from half a mile to 
a mile wide, and in the middle thirty feet deep. It covered an 
area of at least one thousand acres, and must have weighed sev- 
eral millions of tons. It buried everything in its course, destroy- 
ing thirty-one human beings, and about one thousand head of 
cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. Mr. Richardson estimated his 
loss at fifteen thousand dollars. When we saw the valley it was 
overgrown with vegetation, and presented few traces of the terri- 
ble convulsion which must have devastated it. 



34 THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 

Before reaching the sea at Kaalualu, we had to ride nearly 
thirty miles more, over similar detestable lava roads. We were 
scorched by the sun, parched with thirst, and occasionally soaked 
with rain. The only oasis in this black desert was Waiohinu 
{" sparkling water"), nine miles from the sea, through whose 
beautiful valley runs a never-failing stream of pure water. The 
delights of this place, however, were sadly interfered with by 
myriads of mosquitoes, immense flying roaches, and very large 
spiders, which freely enter the houses. The spiders prey upon 
the roaches, and neither insect attacks your person ; but it was 
not pleasant to see them crawling in every direction over the 
floor on which we slept, or lurking in every corner. 

At Kaalualu, during the eruption of 1868, a tidal wave forty 
to fifty feet high swept up the shore, washing away store- 
houses and dwellings, and killing many people. 

From the summit of Haleakala, on Maui, we saw a bright 
light, which we took to be an extraordinary eruption in Kila- 
uea. It proved to be, however, a grand volcanic display from 
the summit crater of Mauna Loa, which two of our party 
returned to witness. 

This eruption, or rather the ejection of lava, from the summit 
crater of Mauna Loa, in August, 1872, was the first one ever 
witnessed in burning activity by the eyes of white men ; and 
one of our party was the first to attain the summit, and the first 
to see and describe this magnificent scene. The description, 
which was published in the Hawaiian papers, and in Silliman's 
Journal, was the result of the visit of a second party, some days 
after ours, and when the fires had lost much of their first activity. 

Eruptions or ejections at the summit have been very rare, 
and, till 1872, have never been studied on the spot. In 1832, 



THE HA W A II AN I SI AND S. 35 

there was an eruption both from the summit and from Kil- 
auea ; but the former was not visited when active. In 1843, 
in January, a flow took place on the northeastern slope about 
thirteen thousand feet up, but not from and in the summit 
crater, which is one thousand feet higher. This flow continued 
about three months; was nearly thirty miles long, and many 
miles wide, so that the amount of material ejected must have 
been immense. 

In 185 1 there was an eruption one thousand feet below the 
summit on the western side, which in four days poured out 
a stream of lava ten miles long, but less than a mile wide. In 
1852 an eruption occurred some four thousand feet below the 
summit, extending twenty miles, half-way to the sea, on the east- 
ern side, continuing for a month; it also flowed for twenty-four 
hours on the northern side, apparently from the summit. 

In 1855 an eruption commenced in the summit crater, 
but the fire had ceased, and only ashes and gases could be 
seen when Mr. Coan visited it at the end of four weeks ; but 
in the meantime a lateral crater opened, two thousand feet 
below the summit, on the northeastern slope, August 11. It 
flowed for thirteen months, the principal stream (and there 
were many lateral smaller ones) with its windings having 
flowed seventy miles, with an average width of three miles, and 
a depth from three feet on the edges, to three hundred feet in 
the middle. It flowed for about fifty miles under its own refrig- 
erated cover ; it came within a few miles of Hilo, and the 
general expectation was that the town would be destroyed. 

In 1859, January 23, a flow broke out four thousand feet from 
the summit, and flowed sixty miles to the sea, on the northern 
side, in eight days, or over seven miles a day. It flowed for 



^6 THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 

some weeks, with great velocity, taking, in its course, the shape 
of cataracts, and of the ground over which it flowed, making 
ascents of five and even twenty degrees. 

In 1865 there was a four-months flow in the summit crater; 
there was no overflow, and, as it occurred in winter, no one went 
up. In 1868 the flow began in the summit crater, but soon died 
out there, and was not seen again till it burst out in several 
craters low down the mountain. This was preceded by the 
severe earthquakes, and the mud eruption, alluded to above. 
The flow went to the south, overwhelming many houses in its 
course ; it followed a valley about five hundred yards wide and 
ten miles long, extending to the sea, where it widened to two or 
three miles. The lava was of the smooth variety, and ten to 
twenty feet deep : other streams burst out at different elevations, 
one of them springing from a crater about a mile long, from 
which spouted columns of liquid lava, of a blood-red color, while 
stones weighing several tons were thrown to a height of five to 
six hundred feet. Sometimes these jets would be distinct, at 
others continuous for a mile in length. The grandeur of this 
ever-varying picture, with the great roar of these fiery fountains, 
must be left to the imagination, for it cannot be described. 
Below the fountains it was actually a river of fire, surging like 
a cataract, from two hundred to eight hundred feet wide, and 
twenty feet deep, rushing with a speed of ten to twenty-five 
miles an hour; according to the declivity over which it flowed. 
At night the scene was terribly intensified, and with the flashes 
of lightning and sharp thunder, it might well represent what 
occurred on a still grander scale in the azoic sfeolooical times, 
before our planet was sufficiently cooled to allow the existence 
of anything possessing life. 



THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 



37 



The eruption lasted only five days ; but so dense was the 
smoke attending it that the noon-day sun appeared like a lurid 
ball of fire. The whole island was shrouded in darkness, and, 
wherever they spread, the sulphur fumes destroyed the vegeta- 
tion. About four thousand acres of good pasture land were 
overflowed, and an immense district of worthless land was cov- 
ered with a crust of ragged lava. 

At about this time severe earthquakes, hurricanes and erup- 
tions occurred in South America, and the East and West 
Indies. This leads to the inference that the causes are of a 
general rather than of a local character. The cause of this 
will be considered hereafter. 

The eruption of 1872 began, on August 9, and lasted over a 
month. The following condensation of the notes of one of 
our party, given here for the first time in a printed form, detail 
the same. 

On their way the travellers naturally stopped at Kilauea, and 
descended the crater, going to Hale-mau-mau, or the South Lake. 
This, at our first visit, was at least one hundred to one hundred 
and fifty feet deep, but it had now filled up to within six feet of 
the rim, and to rush up and take a hasty view was all that the 
heat and suffocating gases would permit : the lava under its 
heavy surgings was liable to splash over or overflow at any 
moment. 

They had scarcely left the edge when a small cone near the 
opening, about one hundred and fifty feet from their position, 
began to pour forth its lava, which came down the hill with a 
rush, dividing into two streams, one of which came directly 
toward them. They left in a hurry, and stood not on the order 
of their going, having to cross, in their retreat, a stream of the 



$S THE HA WAIJAN ISLANDS. 

day before, just hard enough to bear their weight, the red-hot 
lava being distinctly visible through the numerous cracks. The 
heat was almost unendurable, both in the air and under foot.. 
Having reached an old and now solid flow, they watched the 
stream, and saw the rapidity with which the surface cooled, the 
action underneath frequently breaking it up into large pieces, 
turning about like cakes of ice on a river, over which the 
cherry-colored molten lava oozed up and over. This was quite 
an exceptional sight for the crater of Kilauea, and during the 
night, which was cloudy and very dark, the many little fires 
looked like twinkling stars, so that it was easy to indulge the 
illusion that the beholder was gazing downward upon the 
heavens from some distant higher space. 

From Kilauea they proceeded to Richardson's ranche once 
again for the night ; next morning to Ellis's ranche, in two- 
hours ; in one and one half hours more they reached the 
goat region, and an hour later had ascended to the cloud 
region, over meadows thickly covered with large, but taste- 
less, strawberries. In another hour their camping-ground 
was reached in a scattered grove of small trees, about seven 
thousand feet above the sea; here the tent was pitched for 
the night. 

On one side streamed the light from Kilauea, and on the sum- 
mit of the mountain to the northwest, the light from the great 
crater of Mauna Loa rose in a beautiful column to the zenith, 
so glowing and steady that it is not wonderful that, seen - from 
Hilo or the sea, it looked like a column of fire instead of 
light. The night was uncomfortably passed, as the fleas were 
legion, and very active, and the water supply ran short. Next 
morning, after an hour's ride, the travellers had passed the limits- 



THE HA W All AN ISLANDS. 



39 



of vegetation, and nothing was to be seen in any direction but 
vast fields of naked lava. The toilsome ascent was broken by no 
sound but the crunching of the brittle crust of the lava under 
the feet of the mules. At a little after noon the summit was 
reached, where nothing met the eye but a boundless ocean 
of lava, except where, to the northeast, rose still above them 
the serrated crest of Mauna Kea. 

Between the point where the first view of the eruption was 
obtained and the crater itself, was a high precipice about a mile 
long, above the top of which could be seen a fountain of lava 
playing with great regularity, but of so small a size as to be 
inadequate to produce the wondrous light which had for so long 
a time illuminated land and sea. 

Half a mile further to the east, the scene burst upon the 
vision in all its splendor. From the centre of a small cone, 
with an apparent diameter of two hundred feet, sprang a jet 
of molten lava not less than three hundred feet high, and 
about one hundred feet in diameter. There was an opening 
on the northeast side of the cone, from which flowed a river 
of lava, which gradually widened into a broad lake, and from 
the other end of the lake took its course along the base of the 
precipice which separates the north from the south side of 
the crater. It is useless to try to describe such a terribly 
beautiful spectacle. The fiery fountain was the principal 
feature; it had a strange fascination about it, and a "music 
in its roar " not unlike that of Niagara, but without the con- 
cussion and irregular booming sound of the great cataract. 
Imagination can hardly conceive the energy of the internal 
forces which could keep this heavy molten column in perpetual 
suspension so many hundred feet high, and for several weeks. 



4"o 



THE HA WAIIAN ISLANDS. 



The height of this point, as taken by an aneroid barometer, was 
found to be fourteen thousand feet. 

. There is now no trace of the village marked out by the Wilkes 
Exploring Expedition in 1841. At this elevation one of the 
native guides fell exhausted, and all, on the least exertion, suf- 
fered more or less from the rarity of the air. The night was 
very cold, and there was ice an inch or two thick over the 
pools of water which abounded in the crevices of the lava. 

The mules, having nothing to eat at night, very wisely, but 
unfortunately, gnawed off their halters and made tracks for the 
valley. One faithful animal remained, as his halter was tougher 
or his appetite less sharp ; upon him was piled a mountain of 
saddles and camp equipage, and the party followed him down 
over the rugged and trackless lava, reaching the lower .camp in 
five and one half hours, with their sole-leather in a very dilapi- 
dated state, and their feet in scarcely good walking condition. 
Reaching the bottom they found another party, including a 
lady, about to make the ascent; and it is the record of this 
second party, who missed much of the original grandeur, that 
has appeared in various public prints. 

' The distance from Hilo to the summit is sixty-six miles, and 
only sixty-one from the southern part of the island; all of this 
must be done on horseback or on foot ; fatiguing, indeed, but 
it has been accomplished by several ladies. 

The summit crater, Mokuaweoweo (the " red crack "), is the 
most perfectly formed, though not the largest crater on the 
islands. It is a deep pit, with perpendicular walls, somewhat 
broken, seven hundred and eighty-four feet deep on the west, 
and four hundred and seventy feet on the east side. Captain 
Wilkes describes the floor as nearly level, when he made the 



THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 4 ! 

ascent in the winter of 1840, with a large party of natives, sea- 
men and officers. The suffering from the cold, mountain 
sickness, and fatigue, was very great, and two men died there- 
from. Most of the cones seen by him have disappeared, and 
about one third of the floor has subsided two to three hundred 
feet, and from this sunken portion the flow of 1872 occurred. 

The diameter of the crater is eight thousand feet, or nearly 
one and one half miles, and is of an irregularly oval shape. The 
slope from Kilauea to the sea is only one and one half degrees, 
and the .average slope, according to Dana, only six and one half 
degrees. This makes a flattened outline, quite different from 
the usually received notions of a volcano with steep sides. 

The description in Silliman's Journal differs little from the 
one above given, though the grandeur had evidently somewhat 
lessened. The activity in the summit crater lasted for more 
than a year. In August, 1873, the glare lighted up the whole 
island, and was seen by vessels one hundred miles distant 
At this time a party, including a lady, made the ascent, and 
witnessed, though in diminished grandeur, the scenes of 1872. 
Kilauea was also exceedingly active, and the South Lake had 
many times overflowed, the retreating lava building up parti- 
tions from its bottom enclosing walls seemingly independent 
of each other. 

In November, 18S0, a great eruption broke out in the even- 
ing, about six miles north of the summit crater, the lava flowing 
between Mauna Loa "lofty mountain" and Mauna Kea "white 
mountain," and dividing into two branches, one going toward 
Kilauea, and the other threatening Hilo. The stream was some 
forty miles in length, one to two hundred yards wide, and about 
twenty feet deep and flowed like a river of melted rock.' It 



42 



THE HA WAIT AN ISLANDS. 



moved slowly, but with irresistible force, bearing on its surface 
huge bowlders, of tons in weight. No fire could be seen except 
at its front edge, which appeared red-hot. The noises were not 
of explosions, but prolonged roarings like those of hundreds of 
furnaces in full blast. Of course the tremendous heat rendered 
a near approach impossible. It destroyed great forests of koa 
trees, but, fortunately, in the capricious way in which lava often 
moves — turned aside from Hilo. 

News has lately been received of an eruption, accompanied 
by severe earthquakes, which began January 15, 1887. The 
lava flowed down the south slopes, and, after a course of twenty 
miles, reached the sea without doing great damage. 

As I cannot find words to express the terrible splendor of a 
torrent of fiery lava, consuming everything organic in its way, I 
will, in order to give a faint idea of these scenes, quote a few 
passages from a letter of Rev. Mr. Coan to Silliman's Journal, 
in 1852, describing his visit to the great flow from Mauna Loa 
in that year. 

Omitting the details of his difficult and dangerous journey 
from Hilo to the lava stream, it is enough to state that at half- 
past three on the afternoon of the fifth day, he reached the 
crater, and stood alone in the light of its fires. ft will be 
remembered that this eruption broke out about four thousand 
feet from the summit, flowed twenty miles east toward the sea, 
and continued for a month. 

Mr. Coan says : " It was a moment of unutterable interest. 
I seemed to be standing in the presence and before the throne 
of the eternal God ; and, while all other voices were hushed, his 
alone spake. I was ten thousand feet above the sea, in a vast 
solitude, untrodden by the foot of man or beast; amidst a 



THE HA W All AN ISLANDS. 



43 



silence unbroken by any living voice, and surrounded by scenes 
of terrific desolation. Here I stood, almost blinded by the 
insufferable brightness ; almost deafened by the startling 
clangor; almost petrified with the awful scene. The heat was 
so intense that the crater could not be approached within forty 
or fifty yards on the windward side, and probably not within 
two miles on the leeward. ... I approached as near as I 
could bear the heat, and stood amidst the ashes, cinders, scoriae, 
slag, and pumice, which were scattered w r ide and wildly around. 
From the horrid throat of the cone (of eruption) vast and 
continuous jets of red-hot, and sometimes white-hot, lava, were 
being ejected with a noise that w r as almost deafening, and a 
force which threatened to rend the rocky ribs of the mountain, 
and to shiver its adamantine pillars. At times the sound 
seemed subterranean, deep, and infernal. First, a rumbling, a 
muttering, a hissing, or deep premonitory surging ; then followed 
an awful explosion, like the roar of broadsides in a naval battle, 
or the quick discharge of park after park of artillery on the 
field of carnage. Sometimes the sound resembled that of ten 
thousand furnaces in full blast ; again it was like the rattling of 
a regiment of musketry ; sometimes it was like the roar of the 
ocean along a rock-bound shore ; and sometimes like the boom- 
ing of distant thunder. The detonations were heard along the 
shores of Hilo. The eruptions were not intermittent, but con- 
tinuous. Volumes of the fusion were constantly ascending 
and descending like a jet d'eau. The force which expelled 
these igneous columns from the orifice, shivered them into 
millions of fragments of unequal size, some of which would be 
rising, some falling, some shooting off laterally, others describ- 
ing graceful curves ; some moving- in tangents and some falling 



44 



THE HA W All AN ISLANDS. 



back in vertical lines into the mouth of the crater. Every 
particle shone with the brilliancy of Sirius, and all kinds of 
geometrical figures were being formed and broken up. No 
tongue, no pen, no pencil, can portray the beauty, the grandeur, 
the terrible sublimity of the scene. . . . During the night 
the scene surpassed all power of description. Vast columns of 
lava at a white heat, shot up continuously in the ever-varying 
forms of pillars, pyramids, cones, towers, turrets, spires, minarets, 
etc. The descending showers poured in one incessant cataract 
of fire upon the rim of the crater down its burning throat, and 
over the surrounding area, each falling avalanche containing 
matter enough to sink the proudest ship. A large fissure open- 
ing through the lower rim of the crater gave vent to the molten 
flood which constantly poured out of the orifice, and rolled 
down the mountain in a deep, broad river, at the rate, probably, 
of ten miles an hour. This fiery stream we could trace all the 
way down the mountain, until it was hidden from the eye by its 
windings in the forest, a distance of some thirty miles. The 
stream shone with great brilliancy in the night, and a long,, 
horizontal drapery of light hung over its whole course." 



CHAPTER IV. 

HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, HALEAKALA, THE MOON. 

Island of Maui. — Kona, Hawaii. — Waihee — Wailuku valley. — Geese without webs. — 
Rain and drought. — Ride to the summit of Haleakala. — Hard climbing. — Labor school. 
— Size of crater. — Its walls and cinder cones. — Night upon the summit. — Magnifi- 
cence of moon and clouds effects. — Volcanic scenery of the moon. — Huge crater of Coper- 
nicus. — Volcanoes without water.' 

THE island of Maui, the second largest of the group, lies 
to the northwest of Hawaii and within sight of the 
island. It contains the largest known crater, that of Hale- 
akala, the " House of the Sun," now extinct, in height over ten 
thousand feet. Several small islands in the neighborhood are 
probably the broken or isolated fragments of a former large 
semicircular island. Maui is a double island; the Eeka, six 
thousand one hundred feet high, on the western island, being 
separated from Haleakala on the eastern by a low sandy plain, 
a few feet only above the sea; this plain is some nine miles 
wide, but so difficult to see that vessels have stranded upon 
its beach, thinking it a water channel. 

We started from Kaalualu, the southern extremity of Hawaii, 
bound for Maalea Bay, on the isthmus between the islands. 
After a seventy-five-mile horseback ride the little steamer, even 
with its crowded cabin, close air, huge roaches, and other ver- 
min, was a satisfactory change. Rounding Hawaii, the black 
lava is noticed — very extensive, and perfectly desolate for miles 

45 



4 6 



HALEAKALA. 



along the shore, and even far into the interior, especially where 
the flow of 1868 reached the sea. 

We touched at Kealakeakua Bay, on the west side of the 
island, where Captain Cook was killed in 1 789. The lava cliffs 
here are in many places quite perpendicular, and one can 
readily see why the natives gave it this name, which signifies 
" Pathway of the Gods." We next touched at Kona, cele- 
brated for the excellence of its coffee, rarely found abroad, 
and for the salubrity of its climate, probably the finest in the 
world. The thermometer ranges from sixty to eighty degrees 
Fahrenheit, the heat being tempered by the mountain breeze at 
night, and the ocean wind by day ; a temperature perfectly de- 
lightful for almost any debilitated condition, and one which 
physicians frequently prescribe. A hotel recently opened there 
furnishes all necessary comforts to invalids. At Tawaihae, just 
before crossing the rough channel to Maui, may be obtained 
at one time a splendid View of the three great volcanoes of 
Hawaii ; viz., Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, and Hualalai (the last two 
extinct), and the great one on Maui to which we were bound. 

Crossing the channel, which is always rough, we reached 
Maui at the plantation of TJlupalakua, one of the largest and 
most productive sugar plantations on the island, whose indus- 
try is chiefly devoted to the cultivation of the sugar-cane. A 
two hours' sail brought us to the isthmus, where we landed 
in a small bay, then quiet, but the next week so rough that 
no landing could be made. Riding in a carriage across to 
Waihee we were struck with the red color of the soil, which 
is well adapted for sugar-cane if well watered, but otherwise 
sterile; hedges of cactus rose to a height of ten to twelve 
feet, their flat, distorted leaves bristling with spines so thickly 



HALEAKALA. 



47 



that a cat could hardly penetrate an inclosure surrounded 
with them. Now and then a solitary cactus would be seen in 
the middle of a field as large as a good-sized apple-tree, but 
sprawling its uncouth branches without the least symmetry. 
The land was so hard, and the roots of the cane so tough, that 
the usual team for ploughing was six yokes of oxen. Immense 
fields of sugar-cane in various stages of growth covered the 
country with their rich green ; at a little distance a cane-field, 
just coming up, looked very much like a corn-field. 

Before ascending to the great crater let us take a glance up 
Wailuku valley ; one of the most beautiful of the many volcanic 
gorges of this island. The sides are not less than a thousand feet 
high, cut by the most picturesque lateral gorges from the subse- 
quent effect of water and the sun, clothed with green to the very 
summit; a small clear stream winds through the valley, which is 
in some parts well cultivated, adding to the charm of the scenery, 
and furnishing the water necessary for the cane-fields and the 
crushing mill. After leaving the carriage horses are taken for 
a few miles, and are then dismissed, as nobody but a skillful 
and merciless rider can gain the top with a horse. We accom- 
plished it on foot, and took our lunch on a high plateau which 
afforded a fine view of the gorge and of the ocean beyond. 
Here we saw several wild geese: a small species peculiar to the 
islands; very handsome, and capable of domestication. Though 
these birds are web-footed and well adapted for swimming, they 
are never seen near the water, but are confined in their wild 
state exclusively to the mountain region. Their webbed feet 
therefore are clearly of no use to them ; they are even an impedi- ' 
ment ; and, from a Darwinian point of view, we might expect, 
if time enough be given, to see a goose without webbed feet, 



4 8 



HALEAKALA. 



or, at any rate, with the webs very much reduced in size ; 
before that time arrives, however, the bird in the struggle for 
existence will probably become extinct, and thus frustrate us 
in our attempts to provide this most desirable answer to the 
derivative problem. 

The summits of these mountains are almost always on this 
the windward side of the island enveloped in clouds which 
yield the rain for the lower streams. It rarely rains in the 
valley proper ; and on the other side of the island, where these 
clouds do not occur, the land is dry, barren and useless until 
public or private means convey thither water which in other 
parts runs wastefully into the ocean. Maui is an older island 
than Hawaii, and the soil, of long decomposing lava, is thick, 
and needs only water to render it fertile. 

The next day we started to ascend Haleakala. Our party 
consisted of six: three gentlemen and three ladies. We had 
also a guide, and several natives and pack horses to carry our 
tent and cooking utensils, for we intended to camp out that 
night, or the next, on the summit. We started from West 
Maui, the mountain being on the eastern island. Crossing the 
low sandy plain above alluded to, we were almost choked 
with the clouds of red dust set in motion by our own wheels 
and the strong wind from the sea. After several hours of a 
fatiguing and dusty ride, we arrived at Makawao, a large and 
well-conducted sugar plantation on the lower flank of the 
mountain, where we' were most hospitably received. Next 
morning we started, on horses and mules, for the summit. A 
four-mile ride brought us to the Haleakala Labor School for 
Boys, carried on with great success. The ideas of the dignity 
of labor and of education in the industrial arts, will, if anything 



HALEAKALA. 



49 



can, make this indolent, aimless, improvident people an inde- 
pendent nation, and neutralize the influence of the Chinese 
among them, who possess all the traits which the natives lack. 

The distance to the summit was about five miles beyond this, 
and soon the climbing began in earnest ; the last four miles of 
the trail very rough and hard, and we frequently dismounted 
and walked, to save the horses which panted heavily, the exer- 
tion in the rarified air being felt by them as well as by us to be 
unusually fatiguing. About a mile from the top we came to a 
large cave in the lava, often occupied by travellers as a shelter 
for the night ; but we had a tent with us, and as our guide said 
that the fleas would sadly torment us there, we pushed on for 
the summit, which we reached at five p. m. We now saw the 
reason for our numerous retinue of attendants, whose business 
it was to carry wood to the top for our fire, cooking and warmth. 
The lassitude we all felt on the least exertion, and the difficulty 
of breathing at this height, ten thousand feet, came to a ridicu- 
lous climax on our arrival at the camping ground. None of us 
at first could do anything but gasp for breath ; one lady fainted 
entirely away, and a second came very near it, but a judicious 
and timely inward application of an alcoholic stimulant soon 
revived us all. While the men were pitching the tent under a 
projecting shelf of lava, which formed a partial protection from 
the cold and strong wind, and were making a fire, we went to 
look into the crater before it grew dark. 

This, so far as known, the largest extinct crater in the world, 
is at least twenty-seven miles in circumference. Its vastness, 
depth, stillness and desolation are perfectly appalling. The 
walls are in some places perpendicular, in others so sloping that 
man and horse can descend into and cross it. The pit varies 



50 HALEAKALA. 

from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet in depth, and the 
bottom is irregular from the old lava flows which have proceeded 
from the numerous perfect cinder cones now standing there, 
looking as fresh as if the fires had gone out yesterday. Though 
the fires were dead, and have been since the memory of the 
natives, the sight was grander than the burning Kilauea and 
Mauna Loa. 

The air was chilly, and the fire in addition to all our garments 
was necessary to keep us warm. We amused ourselves till dark 
by rolling masses of lava into the depths beneath. Some 
weighed several hundred pounds, and were traceable, after 
bounding from cliff to cliff, only by the little puffs of dust they 
raised in the fine particles below ; we knew there was no danger 
of harming any hun\an being or his property, and the few wild 
goats would easily get out of the way. 

The numerous cones in the crater were very symmetrical, and 
seemed quite fresh and small, though many were over five hun- 
dred feet high, and very old. One can not at first comprehend 
the size of this crater, and, when comprehended, it is to most 
persons the most impressive sight in the islands ; such a cir- 
cuit of dark precipices can be paralleled only in the moon, where 
they are indeed surpassed. It is most likely that both Halea- 
kala and Mokuaweoweo craters are the result of many ancient 
ones which have been opened into each other : this is probably 
true of other great craters. 

It is possible to descend into the crater almost anywhere, but 
the ascent, except in a few places, is so difficult that only the 
wild goats, the only sign of animal life there, can effect it. It 
is evident that the lava broke through the walls to the north 
and east, in valleys from one to three miles wide, as deep as the 



HALEAKALA. 5 Y 

crater, and extending to the sea. There is a tradition among 
the natives that these great streams burst forth while the island 
was occupied by their ancestors many centuries ago. The lava 
looks perfectly fresh in many places, but there are nowhere on 
the island any signs of present volcanic activity, in the shape of 
warm springs, steam jets, or sulphur fumes ; this has long been 
an extinct crater. 

After supper we saw a magnificent sunset. Later still a 
quarter-moon hanging in a cloudless sky above, gave an un- 
earthly look to the great crater. We were above the clouds, and 
their scenery was exceedingly beautiful and peculiar. We stood 
on the top of a mountain ten thousand feet high, with the sea all 
around us, and the high land of Maui near us, yet nothing could 
we see but a continuous bank of fleecy clouds piled up below. 
Of silvery whiteness at first this cloud effect looked like a vast 
sea of ice. It was indescribably splendid. Standing on the 
brink of this dark and silent crater it seemed as if the ocean 
rose to the horizon, which hung midway between the zenith and 
the base of the mountain, the sun apparently setting half-way 
down the sky. The brilliancy of the moon, from such an eleva- 
tion, free from the mists and clouds of earth, is singularly great. 
You seem to be much nearer than ever before to her orb, and 
do not wonder that she should have been worshiped as well 
as the sun, as a deity. The brightness is something supernat- 
ural, and, with the darkness of the non-illuminated parts of the 
crater and the unearthly stillness, strikes one with awe. When 
the moon does not shine, the darkness is sudden and intense, 
as there is no twilight in these islands. 

We slept under our tent, on the ground, blankets above and 
blankets below, with whatever we could find for a pillow. From 



5 2 HALEAKALA. 

the slope of our rocky bed we were continually rolling down 
upon each other. We disposed ourselves for warmth as closely 
together as possible ; when one wanted to turn over all, at a 
given signal, must also turn. We did not sleep much, the hard- 
ness of our bed, the cold (forty degrees Fahrenheit), and the 
incessant chattering of our men outside around the fire pre- 
venting repose. The sunrise was almost as fine as the sunset, 
though not appreciated by our sleepy eyes. After a frugal 
breakfast we started on our return. The descent occupied five 
and one half hours and was more difficult and tiresome than 
the ascent. We had noticed, the night on the mountain, a 
bright illumination in the direction of Kilauea, which we sup- 
posed to be an active eruption in that crater; it proved to be 
the summit eruption of Mauna Loa, the visit to which by some 
of our party has been previously described. 

The singular resemblance of Haleakala and other volcanic 
phenomena of the earth to the scenery of the moon may be 
farther impressed on the mind by an abstract of what Proctor 
and other modern astronomers and scientists have written and 
spoken in late years concerning the earth's satellite and her 
history. 

Prof. Proctor has noticed the striking resemblance between 
the configuration of the American Continent and that of the 
moon's surface as seen through the best modern telescopes. 
The broad plains extending from the Missouri to the Rocky 
Mountains much resemble the so-called " seas " of the moon, 
bordered by ranges of mountains, beyond which lie the great 
volcanic craters. These show, with their prevailing dark tints, a 
former condition on the moon like that now found on the earth, 
especially in America, and indicate that the moon, now dry, had 



HALEAKALA. 



53 



once its large seas ; the slow process by which these seas were 
changed to land is now going on oh an extended scale and very 
slowly on the earth. We may read a similar chapter of resem- 
blances in the volcanoes. 

As we look upon the full moon, it is hard to believe that her 
face, bright only by reflected light, has been torn and convulsed 
by volcanic forces on a scale more grand than any yet known to 
the earth. The lofty and ragged precipices of the moon, her 
deep chasms, immense craters, barren and lifeless deserts, and 
dreary waterless plains, can not be paralleled on the earth. The 
dark portions of the moon, which at the full are thought to re- 
semble the human face, are in reality dark shadows cast by the 
ridges and craters of extinct volcanoes. Of these the largest is 
Copernicus, with a width of fifty-five miles, — five or six times as 
large as any on the earth, — while its height is about eleven 
thousand two hundred and fifty feet. Its vast plain is surrounded 
by a circular wall, with central cones and huge bowlders dis- 
tributed over its surface. In its vicinity are other craters, 
ridges, and gulfs of immense proportions, heights and depths. 

The greater size of the volcanoes of the moon, and of those 
on the earth in distant geological ages, may be partly explained 
by the appearances described by Mr. Mathieu Williams, in his 
work " The Fuel of the Sun," and which he regards as masses of 
fused metallic cinders cooling without the presence of water, an 
element that seems to be essential for the production of modern 
volcanoes. In watching the cooling of the melted mass as it 
flows from the puddling furnace (the so-called tap-cinder of a 
blast furnace), into the stout iron boxes, or bogies, usually of a 
circular form, we may notice, first, a thin solid crust forming 
on the red-hot surface, which quickly cools and blackens. If 



54 HALEAKALA. 

this crust is pierced, the red-hot matter beneath is seen to be* 
in active movement, and a portion exudes from the opening. 
If left undisturbed in the bogie, a kind of volcanic eruption 
occurs, usually near the centre of the crust, sending spurts of 
the fused material to a height four or five times the width of 
the bogie ; then a regular crater is formed, and small streams,, 
representing lava, pour from it, sometimes irregularly and vio- 
lently from the bursting of bubbles of gas ; these form a cone as 
wide as the bogie, and often as high as half its depth. This 
study will afford, on a small scale, a typical volcano in erup- 
tion, and under circumstances resembling those of a highly 
heated planet or satellite, in the absence of water, where the 
fused materials have been inclosed in a resisting and contract- 
ing crust. 

Applying this comparison to the moon, it is more reasonable 
to suppose that its crater-covered surface was due rather to 
processes like those described by Mr. Williams, than to the slow 
and intermittent action which we now notice in the volcanic 
phenomena of the earth ; in the former case water would have 
been unnecessary, and vaporous matter to any great extent 
would not have been ejected. However much, therefore, the 
moon's surface may at first sight resemble Haleakala or such 
other portions of the earth's exterior, now or formerly rent by 
volcanic action, the cause may have been different ; in the moon, 
as in our own planet in its first cooling age, the eruptions were 
doubtless produced as in the cooling of the fused matters in 
the bogies, and without the presence of water. In our present 
and extinct volcanoes, the centre being comparatively solid, the 
heat is probably due to the tension, fracture, and movements 
of the shrinking crust, the agency of water being a power- 



HALEAKALA. 



55 



ful, if not necessary, auxiliary in the production of the phe- 
nomena. 

The mystery of the cold, silent moon, rent by deep chasms, 
covered by immense extinct craters, airless, waterless, lifeless, 
barren — an extinguished planet accompanying our earth — may 
reveal to the eye of prophetic science the doom of our globe and 
the whole solar system. 



CHAPTER V. 

ICELAND. VOLCANOES AND GEVSERS. 

Extinct craters and old lava streams. — Thingvalla and its chasms. — Volcanic upheaval on 
a large scale. — Long line of submarine fissure. — Skaptar jokul. — Hekla. — Its historic 
eruptions. — Scenery of desolation. — The geysers. — Great Geyser. —The Strokr, and 
what it did for us. — Explanation of geyser action. 

IN the year 1874, during the Millennial Celebration in Iceland, 
I had the rare opportunity of visiting, under the most favor- 
able circumstances, much of the characteristic volcanic scenery 
of that singular and far northern island. This was done during 
a journey to Thingvalla and the geysers. The trip was of neces- 
sity made on horseback, over a region for the most part barren, 
and hemmed in by volcanic ridges. In the distance some snow- 
capped mountains were seen, including the peak of Hekla. All 
the lava was very old, and covered with moss, while its angles 
were rounded by long exposure. 

In this part of the island there is no tradition of any volcanic 
eruption since the advent of the Northmen. The ragged char- 
acter of the surface, the marks of fusion, and the fantastic and 
twisted shapes, show, however, that this was the scene of great 
disturbance, and the sources of the molten material are evident 
in the surrounding heights. The lava does not differ from that 
noticed in the Hawaiian Islands and about Vesuvius. 

On the way to Thingvalla the barren lava plain stretched as 
far as the eye could reach in almost every direction, while the 

56 



ICELAND.— VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 



57 



scenery became wilder and more desolate as we left the sea. 
The scene was gray and silent except for the hoarse croak of 
the raven or the shrill cry of the plover. The aspect was 
depressing, and seemed to carry the beholder back in geological 
time almost to primeval chaos. The approach is through the 
Almannagja, or the " Chasm of All Men," the exit being by a 
similar one, the " Chasm of the Raven," ten miles distant. The 
plain below, at the depth of one hundred and fifty to two hun- 
dred feet, was green and pleasant, with the river Oxer winding 
through it. Its whole expanse, some ten by five miles, was, 
no doubt, at a very remote period, a mass of lava on a level 
with the top of these chasms ; the product of the Skaldbreid or 
" Broad Shield " volcano which is in full view to the north. 

One theory of the way in which the valley was formed is, 
that this great plateau of lava sank either from contraction and 
depression at the time when solidification began, or from long 
subsequent falling in to fill up the abyss left by an earthquake 
or other volcanic disturbance. Another is that a more recent 
lava stream flowed over the old one, and that its weight, with 
its accompanying heat, broke in and fissured the cavernous 
layer beneath, from whose interior much of the old lava mass 
had drained away into the lake, leaving a comparatively thin 
crust above. Time and nature have, in a measure, covered its 
ugliness with a scanty vegetation. 

The whole island has, in one part or another, been torn by 
volcanic agency, and most of the mountains seem to be in a 
state of intermittent activity liable to break out at any time. It 
was the chief volcanic centre in the basin of the Northern Ocean. 
Norway on the east and Greenland on the west show the prim- 
itive rocks of granite, gneiss, and mica slates, and these have 



5 8 ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 

even been found in Iceland. Its nucleus was thrown up from a 
very deep ocean by volcanic power, but is nowhere more than 
half a mile high except where some of the volcanic peaks and 
plateaus attain a height of over six thousand feet. It consists 
chiefly of basaltic rock and silicious tufa, formed beneath the 
sea, the former raised in the tertiary, and the latter in the glacial 
period, the lavas having been subsequently poured out, entirely 
above water. The upheaving force appears to have followed 
a course from southwest to northeast. There must have been 
several extensive oscillations of the soil, and within the memory 
of persons now living, the coast on the north and west has 
risen considerably. 

About one hundred miles north of the capital, and fifteen miles 
from the coast, is the Ellborg, which in the ninth and tenth cen- 
turies was an active volcano. This is a cinder or ash hill, about 
six hundred feet in diameter, crowned with a tower some two 
hundred feet high. Its lava ruins, of every shade of color, va- 
riety of form, and degree of roughness, resemble a vitrified sea. 

The activity of the Iceland volcanoes, broken by various 
periods of repose, has been sufficiently described in books de- 
voted to the island. Krabla, Katlugia, Hekla and Skaptar are 
familiar names in this connection. Their eruptions have been 
accompanied by terrible earthquakes, and the country has been 
devastated by water from the melted ice, mud, lava and ashes, 
with great destruction of life and property. Iceland is evi- 
dently on the line of a great volcanic fissure in the earth's 
crust, extending from Jan Meyen in the north, to St. Helena 
in the south ; passing through the Azores, Canaries, and Cape 
de Verd Islands ; a distance of one hundred and twenty degrees 
of latitude on very nearly the same meridian. 



ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 59 

Since the year iooo Hekla has erupted thirteen times, and 
Katlugia fifteen times. The few from Skaptar and Vatna 
jokuls have been of extraordinary violence, that of Vatna, in 
1874-75, desolating some of the finest portions of the island. 
Krabla is surrounded by old craters or pits of boiling sulphur- 
ous mud. One described by Henderson was three hundred 
feet in circumference; horrible to look at, and dangerous to 
approach because of the fetid gases, treacherous soil and 
numerous pitfalls. 

The most disastrous of all the eruptions on record was that 
from Skaptar, eighty miles east of Hekla, in June, 1783. It 
was preceded by violent earthquakes. The lava was in some 
places six hundred feet deep and two hundred feet wide, and 
flowed like a river towards the sea, one of the streams indeed 
reaching the ocean. It was in full activity for two and a half 
months ; and continued, gradually diminishing, for six months 
more. The lava was more than two years in cooling. One 
stream was fifty miles long, twelve to fifteen wide on the plain, 
and one to six hundred feet deep. Another was forty miles long 
and seven wide ; pasture-lands for one hundred miles around 
were covered by pumice, sand and ashes. The matter ejected 
was estimated at twice the volume of Hekla : one hundred thou- 
sand millions of cubic yards. This was, according to Bischoff, 
greater than the bulk of Mt. Blanc, and was probably as large 
as any single mass of the older igneous rocks known to exist. 

Mt. Hekla presents a great variety of forms, according to the 
point of view of the observer, but the mountain always deserves 
the name of " cloaked," with its mantle of snow or canopy of 
clouds. The plain from which it rises is a very fertile one, and 
contains more farms than any other region of equal area. Its 



6o ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 

barren and sanely portions, the work of the volcano, are strewn 
with rounded pebbles, worn by the constantly-shifting waters, 
the great rain-fall and the attrition of wind-blown sands. 

The view of Hekla from our camp was exceedingly fine. The 
ascent of this volcano, though difficult, is not dangerous. It was 
ascended by Madame Pfeiffer in 1845, an d has been achieved 
by several persons since. It is neither the highest nor the 
most remarkable of the Iceland volcanoes, but it has attracted 
the most attention from its comparative ease of access and its 
frequent and disastrous eruptions. Though only about five 
thousand feet high, with a circumference of twenty-five miles, 
it is one of the three great volcanoes of Europe, the other 
two being Etna and Vesuvius. It is isolated about thirty-five 
miles inland, and in clear weather can be seen from the ocean. 

Hekla is composed of tufaceous slag, ashes and pumice, which 
are cemented by its own lava streams, and overlaid by silicious 
strata which are the result of submarine volcanic action. It is a 
part of a ridge of vast extent, belonging to the linear system of 
volcanoes, the crater changing along the extent of the fissure. It 
is surrounded by a circle of lower lava hills, by untrod glaciers 
and dazzling snow-fields. The ground about it seems under- 
mined, and footsteps on the plain produce a hollow sound. The 
cone appears quite regular ; the sides at an angle of about thirty-^ 
five degrees. It had, when we visited it, three peaks the central 
one being the largest. The craters are hollows in the sides* 
and, at the time of our visit, were completely covered with snow. 
It is rent with deep chasms, and numerous cones are scattered 
over the plain. 

Since the first recorded eruption in the tenth century, there 
have been nearly thirty outbreaks. That of 1766 was very 



ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 6 1 

violent, and continued three months, burying the fertile plain 
around it to an extent of ten miles. The eruption of 1845, 
also very violent, lasted seven months, and the ashes were carried 
by the wind to the Orkneys; more than six hundred miles away. 
A severe outburst occurred in 1878. All agree that there is no 
summit crater, the lava having flowed from great fissures on 
the sides, and presenting at the top an extensive and grand 
view of an immeasurable black chaos and shining fields of snow. 

In 1875 one of the most extended and violent eruptions any- 
where in modern times, occurred in the Vatna district, from a 
nest of volcanoes covering a region of snow and ice one hun- 
dred and fifteen miles long and sixty miles wide. It lasted 
several months, accompanied by such destruction of property, 
and even of life, that the whole country was impoverished, and 
Denmark and Great Britain were called upon to aid the starv- 
ing people. The ashes from this eruption were carried in large 
quantities across the ocean to Norway. There is probably no 
part of the world, except the Hawaiian Islands and the Javan 
archipelago, that has been so frequently and terribly convulsed 
by earthquakes and overwhelmed by volcanic eruptions as Ice- 
land ; showing clearly that these are, independent of latitude, 
by the singular paradox of extensive glaciers, fiery lava streams 
and boiling geysers in close proximity. 

Not less interesting are the geysers in the valley of Haukadal, 
a toilsome day's journey on horseback to the northward of 
Thingvalla. A ride of two hours along this sunken lava plain, 
which is in many places covered with vegetation, brought us 
to a black chasm extending from the lake to the mountains 
that form its eastern boundary. Difficult as was the descent 
by the western chasm, the ascent by this one was more rugged 



62 ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 

because of the distorted character of the lava. Though only- 
one hundred feet deep, the chasm is very much broken; the 
precipices overhanging and threatening to fall, the bottom filled 
with sharp, huge, irregular fragments, while below them lies a 
dark and treacherous-looking water. The grandeur and wild- 
ness are very imposing, and one feels like a pigmy visiting a 
battlefield of the Titans. This exit from this horrible pit 
would be impossible, and would necessitate a dangerous and 
fatiguing circuit of many miles, had not immense fragments 
happened to fall in such a way as to form a natural bridge 
across the chasm. It is a passage, however, which, during a 
high wind, or blinding storm, or from the slipping or fright of 
a horse, would be extremely perilous, and it is indeed always try- 
ing to ill-balanced nerves. The sun came out and warmed us, 
and the ponies carried us well over miles of desolation, as they 
could not easily leave the path without breaking their necks. 
Skirting one of the mountain meadows was a high volcanic 
ridge, one of whose old lava streams had suddenly cooled on the 
top, while the fluid contents ran out at the bottom. This had 
left a large cave which has long been used as a sheep pen ; we 
did not enter, dreading the vermin which congregate in such 
places. 

Passing around the flank of Hekla, with its mantle of glitter- 
ing snow, we perceived far away in the distance what looked 
like a jet of steam, and imagined we were near the geysers. 
It was, however, only one of the many jets occurring in this 
region, telling of the subterranean fiery energies. At about 
seven p.m. — for it is light here till after nine — we came into 
the great verdant plain in which are situated the famous gey- 
sers. This excited us to hurry forward to witness the eruption 



ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 



63 



we fancied was imminent. It seemed like a paradise after so 
much barren lava, from the many flowers whose growth is 
favored by the heat and moisture. 

In a space inclosing a quarter of a mile in length by three 
hundred feet in width are the Great and Little Geyser, the 
Strokr, and a dozen other smaller and nameless ones. The 
ground seemed honey-combed like a body pierced by foul 
ulcers, and from the pits and mounds were issuing steam, 
boiling water, and liquid mud, which made a sizzling and bub- 
bling, and at times a thumping, that indicated an ample supply 
of heat and water that would soon cook us should the thin and 
resonant crust break beneath our weight. 

Threading our way among these ugly-looking holes, we climbed 
a grassy hill above the Strokr, and pitched our tent. There 
was no time to collect wood and perform the ordinary cooking 
operations for a party of twelve famished persons, so our cook 
simply plunged some canned meats into the hot water of the 
Little Geyser, and in the same immersed our tea and coffee-pot. 
Very speedily our meal was ready without any expense of time 
or trouble in making a fire. The water at the surface was not 
boiling hot, and a finger could be rapidly passed through it 
without scalding the skin. 

We went to sleep with one eye and one ear open, but their 
subterranean majesties, except by a few sullen thumps, as if to 
show their anger at the intrusion of the curious foreigners, made 
no exhibition of their powers. In this verdant plain, with the 
white icy mountains to the north, and the heat of the tropics 
under our feet, our surroundings seemed like a fairy scene 
rather than an earthly reality. 

Geysers or spouting springs are found all over Iceland, some 



64 ICELAND.— VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 

sending up their steam jets from the midst of perpetual ice, and 
others bubbling up beneath the ocean near the coasts ; but 
most are in districts in which the volcanic agencies are appar- 
ently dying out. Whether constant or intermittent, they nearly 
all deposit a silicious matter, forming the basin and the pipe, 
and finally closing the opening by their own incrustations. 
This shows the intimate relations of the geysers, both as to 
cause and source of supply, with volcanic lavas. Silic" and 
its compounds are the predominant constituents in both. 

At a distance, the jets of steam so quiet and uniform, do not 
impress one with the real grandeur of the turmoil that is going 
on beneath the surface. They make less fuss than the Cali- 
fornia geysers and the Japanese hot springs. There are two 
kinds ; one having jets of clear water, the other puffs of scalding 
vapor coming up through a soft, reddish, clayey mud impreg- 
nated with iron. Silica is held in solution by salts of soda, a 
silicate of soda being their principal ingredient. The water also 
contains sulphureted hydrogen, detected by the odor. Though 
most of this escapes as it cools, enough remains to injure the 
flavor of tea and toddy made with it. 

The Great Geyser, which seems always to have been of about 
the same size, is situated on a mound of silicious tufa, of thin, 
easily detached plates, crumbling under the feet, deposited from 
the overflow of its own waters. The mound is twenty feet high 
and some two hundred feet in diameter, the basin resembling 
a saucer sixty feet across, and five feet deep. In the centre of 
this basin is a sort of pipe ten feet across, gradually narrowing 
to seven, and seventy feet deep where it ends or takes a turn 
which prevents further sounding ; it is smoothly polished on 
the inside. Its eruptions are preceded and accompanied by 




ERUPTION OF STROKR. 



ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 67 

subterranean rumblings and boomings, causing the water and 
the soil to tremble. Its immense volume of water is thrown to 
a height of one hundred feet, ascending to its full elevation like 
a fountain, by spasmodic efforts, each more violent than the 
preceding, and assuming the form of a sheaf of silvery columns 
in an urn or tree-like shape. An eruption rarely lasts more than 
ten minutes, when the force is exhausted, and the water retires 
with a sullen roar within the tube, sometimes leaving the basin 
dry for several hours. When we saw it the basin was full, bub- 
bling in the centre, and with an occasional elevation there and 
an overflow at the sides. The surface is usually covered with a 
dense steam. It is very capricious in its action. It would not 
spout for Prince Napoleon in 1856, nor for the King of 
Denmark and our American party in 1874. 

The Strokr or Churn, is the most interesting of the geysers, 
as it may be provoked any day to show its powers by artificial 
means, viz : by pouring a cart-load of dirt down its throat. 
This was directly in front of our tent, and we went to work to 
get ready the pile of sods to produce the eruption on the 
morrow. Its mouth is a rounded hole in the rock about six 
feet in diameter. We could see the water, some twelve feet 
below, boiling with the usual bubbling and splashing of violent 
ebullition, and an occasional emission of steam. The whole 
depth is forty-four feet, and twenty-seven feet down the tube is 
said to contract to about eight inches. 

Next morning the earth emetic was administered, and we 
retired to a respectful distance to await its operation. After 
waiting twenty minutes the internal commotion was much in- 
creased, with rumbling sounds; then the black mass was up- 
heaved with violence in a column as large as the opening, 



68 ICELAND. — VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 

consisting of innumerable jets with whirling masses of sods. 
Some of the streams went rolling down the hill, but most fell 
into the mouth, to be again ejected. The eruption lasted about 
ten minutes in full force, and then gradually subsided, with a 
few high jets. As near as we could judge, the height attained 
was not over one hundred feet. Compared with that of the 
Great Geyser, the stream is slender and dark-colored. The 
eruptions will continue till the sods are discharged, or so broken 
up that they do not obstruct the escape of the steam. The 
sods were a stringy kind of peat, which retained their form and 
consistence for a considerable time. 

Different theories have been advanced to account for these 
eruptions. The oldest one, and that favored by Prof. Lyell, is 
that water collects in subterranean chambers (which, from vol- 
canic causes, must be numerous in Iceland) ; that this water, 
boiling from the elevated temperature of the strata existing 
between the crust and the nucleus of the globe, and whose 
movements from tension and fracture are converted into heat, 
is forced to the surface through natural openings by the com- 
pressed steam which ejects this water as a fountain or geyser. 
In the case of the Stroke the foreign matters introduced settle 
in the narrow throat of the pipe, and prevent the escape of 
the steam until the pressure becomes sufficient to throw out 
the obstruction with the imprisoned water. 

Bunsen, Tyndall and others explain the formation, life, and 
extinction of a geyser, briefly as follows : — 

By the action of carbonic acid, sulphureted hydrogen, and 
heat from the above mentioned cause, a hot spring takes its 
origin. It acts on the silicious strata about it, and separates the 
silica which it deposits on its overflowed margin; this incrusta- 



ICELAND.— VOLCANOES AND GEYSERS. 



69 



tion, gradually increasing in height, is by degrees converted 
into a tube, which, in its ever-increasing mound of silicious 
tufa, becomes a geyser. The long, narrow tube is continually 
filled and replenished with a column of highly heated water, 
which, under the accumulated pressure of the mass above it, 
attains a much higher temperature than the original spring. 
The rapid generation of highly heated steam is the mechanical 
power of the geyser which, according to the heat accumulated 
and the resistance of the column, throws up the stream with 
violence, and maintains it till the equilibrium is restored. 

When by deposits from its own waters the tube becomes so 
long that the supply of heat from below and the cooling at the 
surface of the column are so nearly equal that none of the 
water can attain the boiling point owing to an increased pres- 
sure, the eruptions cease, and the geyser becomes such a heated 
pool as is the so-called Little Geyser. It has been estimated, 
from the deposit of silica made in twenty-four hours, that the 
Great Geyser is about one thousand and sixty years old. In its 
earlier days it would be quite insignificant, and is not men- 
tioned in the older Icelandic annals ; it is probably now in its 
stage of decay. According to this theory the power of a geyser 
lies wholly in its tube, and is not due to steam accumulated in 
any imaginary and unnecessary subterranean cavern. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. VESUVIUS. 

Gulf of Naples an immense crater. — Ancient and modern Vesuvius. — Recent eruptions. 
— Outbreak of 1872. — Ascent of the mountain by carriage and rail. — Observatory. — 
The crater by night. — On the brink. — Trembling of cone from swash of lava, and fre- 
quent volcanic bombs. — Difficulty of return from darkness. — Chemical composition of 
lavas. 

VESUVIUS is about eight miles from Naples, whose bay 
it overlooks, at the eastern extremity of a chain extend- 
ing to the island of Ischia, which was rent by an earthquake in 
March, 1881, and again in July, 1883. The whole Gulf of Naples, 
as above limited, was probably an immense crater ; doubtless 
the eastern end of a great rent in the earth's crust, Etna being 
at the western extremity, and Stromboli in the centre. It 
seems not to have been the chief rent in historic times until 
a. d. 79, when Herculaneum [now Resina] and Pompeii were 
overwhelmed by its scoriae and ashes, and the ancient crater of 
Monte Somma on the north and east was separated from the 
present cone by the valley of the Atrio del Cavallo, seven hun- 
dred feet wide. 

The base of the mountain is over thirty miles in circumfer- 
ence ; it is about two thousand three hundred feet to the base 
of the cone, which is in addition one thousand six hundred to 
one thousand nine hundred feet. The greatest recorded height 
of the summit, which varies after each eruption, is four thousand 
two hundred and fifty-three feet ; the top is truncated some two 

70 



MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 73 

thousand feet in diameter, with a crater, on an average, five 
hundred feet deep. The observatory is two thousand and eighty 
feet above the sea; that on Etna is nine thousand eight hundred 
feet: one thousand five hundred feet higher than the Hospice 
of St. Bernard, and the highest inhabited spot in Europe. 

The Vesuvius of the ancients was a truncated cone with a base 
of eight or nine miles, and a height of four thousand feet. At 
its summit was a depressed plain three miles in diameter. On 
this plain the gladiator Spartacus was besieged by the Romans, 
in the year 72 b.c. Vesuvius had never been deemed a volcano. 
Its sides were covered with fields and vines, and its crater over- 
grown with wild grapes. In a. d. 79 the great historic eruption 
formed the present crater and in this the modern cone has been 
built up. The mountain has undergone great changes during the 
last one hundred and fifty years ; its bulk, as also its height, has 
increased, though varying from year to year by its own ejections. 

Some of its lavas, being very liquid, have flowed rapidly, and 
almost like water, for miles beyond its base ; others have been 
so viscid as to advance only an inch or two a day, for several 
years. When the lava is slow moving, as in 1858, it becomes 
wrinkled and folded ; is coiled like ropes, or twisted like molasses 
candy, the chilled surface being crumpled by the heaving mass 
TDelow ; when rolling quickly, as in 1872, it is broken into 
enormous, rough, cindery ridges, with much emission of the 
imprisoned and active steam. As in Etna, great cones of tra- 
chytic acid materials have been inclosed by the later eruptions 
of less silicious basaltic lavas. Occasionally, as in 1660, ashes 
and smoke without lava have been ejected. The black dust is 
pyroxenic, while the white is leucitic, with chloride of sodium or 
salt, the insoluble parts being the same as in the lavas, and the 



74 



MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 



soluble as the gaseous matters which accompany the smoke ; 
the last destroy vegetation by the free chlorohydric acid which 
they contain. The smoke strongly is positively electric ; the fall- 
ing ashes are negative. Flames are rarely seen, and, when pres- 
ent, are due to hydrogen and its combinations with sulphur; 
even these are faint, and tinged with various metallic oxides. 

The frequent connection existing between earthquakes and 
volcanoes is shown by the history of Etna and Vesuvius. As 
in the former the earthquake of Melfi preceded the grand erup- 
tion of 1852, so in the latter that of Basilicato, December, 1857, 
ended with the eruption of 1858, while those of Calabria, in 
1867 and 1870, were the precursors of the phenomena of 1868 
and 1871-72. 

It will be necessary here to simply enumerate the principal 
eruptions of Vesuvius since the memorable one which buried 
Herculaneum and Pompeii. Prof. Palmieri, of Naples, has laid 
it down as a rule that when, after a considerable . period of 
repose, the central crater presents a series of small and fre- 
quent eruptions, a grand outburst may be expected. This was 
the case in 1822, and in 1855 (after thirty years of comparative 
quiet), and again in 1858, 186 1, 1868 and 1872. The eruption 
of 1 63 1, after centuries of. inactivity, is really not an exception, 
as no one thought of danger from a mountain whose sides were 
covered with vegetation, and whose base was in contact with 
fertile plains. The antecedents were, therefore, not observed 
nor attended to. Automatic instruments now in use at the 
Observatory give and record the warnings of the slightest 
tremblings of the crater. 

This eruption of 1631 came on suddenly and unexpectedly. 
It began on the sixteenth of December, and continued until 



MEDITERRANEAN VOL CANO ES. — VES UVIUS. 



77 



February, 1632. During this time the cone lost so much of 
its height as to be fifteen hundred and thirty feet lower than 
Somma. The flow nearly destroyed Torre dell' Annunziata, 
Torre del Greco, Resina, and Portici on the southwest slope, 
and torrents of boiling water from the melted snow, mud and 
lava, killed three thousand persons. 

The eruption of 1779 was very grand. Stones were projected 
several thousand feet into the clouds of w T hite vapor, with large 
masses of molten rock, and columns of fiery matters. In June, 
1794, Torre del Greco was again destroyed by lava which flowed 
to the bay in a stream nearly a quarter of a mile wide and fif- 
teen feet thick, estimated to contain forty-six million cubic feet. 
The eruption of October, 1822, continued for nearly a month, 
rupturing the top of the cone, and forming a crater three miles 
in circumference, and about one thousand feet deep. In May, 
1855, the cone was again rent asunder. The flow continued 
twenty-seven days, and was very destructive to cultivated fields. 
In May, 1858, the Hermitage was nearly surrounded. In 1861 
the eruption was very violent, but was of only seven hours' 
duration. It overwhelmed Torre del Greco, but on account 
of the intense cold the lava cooled very rapidly. 

In the middle of November, 1867, a cone about seventy feet in 
diameter, which had formed within the large crater in two years, 
poured out a great amount of lava. Beside the main stream 
from the great crater, there was a flow from an outside orifice 
of twenty feet in diameter, and twenty-five feet wide, rapidly 
reaching the bottom of the mountain. With loud roars and 
heavy shocks, through the glowing vapor huge stones were sent 
many hundred feet high every few seconds. It continued until 
January, 1868, and is regarded as one of the grand eruptions. 



yS MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 

The outbreak of April 24, 1872, had been preceded for 
several months by slight premonitory symptoms. Its greatest 
intensity was from the twenty-fourth to the twenty-sixth, after 
which it gradually diminished. The volcano had been quiet 
from November, 1868, to December, 1870, the previous eruption 
having ended in a copious stream from the rent cone formed on 
the first-named date. Early in 187 1 the seismograph became 
inquiet, and, from the slight disturbance, Prof. Palmieri proph- 
esied an outburst. Cones formed during the year, and in the 
early months of 1872. Crowds of people from Naples ascended 
the mountain nightly to witness the splendors. Several persons 
were buried in the Atrio del Cavallo by a flow of lava on April 
26, from a rent in the cone one thousand feet wide on the north- 
west side. The Observatory was between two fiery torrents, 
and the heat was so intense as to break the window glass. 
Many small animals and countless insects perished, and the 
whole country was white from minute leucitic crystals resem- 
bling a saline efflorescene. On the twenty-seventh the flow 
had greatly lessened, but the matters ejected were estimated at 
twenty million tons. Much of this covered the lava of 1868, 
but the damage done to the fields and crops was estimated at 
three quarters of a million dollars. The bottom of the crater 
was broken up, and the sides were fissured in all directions. 
As Prof. Palmieri expressed it, " Vesuvius sweated fire." 

Many of these rents are still visible. Pictures taken by the 
instantaneous photographic process show enormous volumes of 
globular vaporous masses, with numerous fragments thrown 
several thousand feet high ; so many of these went as far as the 
Observatory, that it was unsafe to go out. Three principal 
fiery floods rushed down the mountain and far beyond its base, 



MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 



79 



overwhelming San Sebastian, Massa, and other hamlets, and 
many isolated houses. The streams gave off large clouds of 
steam, which formed miniature volcanoes in their course ; the 
earth-tremors and vibrations were constant, with vivid lightning 
from the intense electrical excitement of the uprising column, 
and heavy rains from the condensation of the immense amounts 
of watery vapor. The streets of Naples were covered several 
inches deep with black sand, and the flow was at least three 
fifths of a mile wide at its lower portion. The people of the 
city and the neighboring villages fled to the country, with their 
movable valuables, as if fearing a catastrophe similar to the one 
so graphically described in Bulwer's " Last Days of Pompeii." 
From 1876 to 1886, there have been several insignificant erup- 
tions, with very little escape of lava beyond the crater, an 
account of which may be found by those interested in the vol- 
umes of the "American Journal of Science and Art," for the 
respective years. A noted one occurred in 1880. 

The ascent of Vesuvius has been robbed of most of its 
fatigue and excitement by the introduction of the steam railroad, 
which was commenced in 1875. It is customary now to take 
a carriage from Naples to the lower station, visiting on the way 
the dismal galleries of Herculaneum at Resina, rendered doubly 
gloomy by a cloudy day. 

As we went up we passed over and along the lava streams of 
1858 and 1868, of every degree of ruggedness and barrenness, 
ard presenting the most fantastic forms. Mounting the steep 
zigzag, frequently in a gentle rain, with thunder clouds all about 
us, we could see the bay in a bright sunlight. We reached the 
Observatory in two and a half hours, where we stopped to ex- 
amine the various instruments prepared for the observation of 



80 MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 

earthquake and volcanic phenomena. Many of these are so del- 
icate that the stamping of a foot would cause the registration of 
the vibration. This station was founded by Ferdinand the Second 
in 1 84 1, under the direction of the distinguished physicist, Mel- 
loni; it is now presided over by Prof. Palmieri. It contains a 
fine collection of Vesuvian minerals, and memorials of the 
recent eruptions. Any disturbance at the summit is indicated, 
by the automatic apparatus. 

A half-hours ride brought us to the lower railroad station.. 
From here, by an endless wire-rope and steam windlass, we were 
drawn, in about fifteen minutes, near to the edge of the crater,, 
by one section of one and one quarter miles, attaining the Atrio 
del Cavallo, and by the second, of two thirds of a mile, to the 
upper station, whence an average walker may reach the rim in 
fifteen or twenty minutes. 

At 6.20 p. m. I started, with three ladies and four guides, up 
the gentle slope which winds around the summit to the grand 
crater. It was now quite cool, and the rarefied air made walk- 
ing in the yielding sand and breathing somewhat tiresome and 
difficult. The rain had ceased, and it was growing dark in the 
plains below. When three quarters of the way up we met a 
strong puff of sulphurous vapor, which caused us to cough vio- 
lently. Above us we saw driving clouds of what seemed this 
same vapor, and this so frightened the panting ladies that they 
dared go no farther. Leaving them in charge of three guides, 
to remain in a sheltered position till my return, I took the other 
and went on. 

I found that most of the vapor was steam from the rain which 
had fallen on the hot rocks, though there were many streaks 
of suffocating gas which compelled me to breathe through all: 



MEDITERRANEAN VOL CANOES. — VES UVIUS. 8 3 

the folds of my handkerchief. There was no path visible, so 
we scrambled as best as we could over rugged places, slippery 
surfaces and irregular fissures. The rocks were so hot that I 
could not bear my hand on them, while acrid invisible vapors 
issued all around from numerous small cones and ugly crevices. 
It was now so dark that progress was slow, and the blinding 
vapor prevented my seeing before me or where to place my 
feet. Taking the guide's hand, J ran, slid, tumbled and crawled, 
with not a few wrenches and bruises, until at last I stood on the 
edge of the grand crater. The grandeur of the scene cannot be 




A. Great crater. C. Where I stood. 

B. Cone of eruption. D. Valley where stones fell. 

described. I can simply say that in the midst of the great pit 
arose the cone of eruption, now and then hidden by vapors, 
and separated from my position only by a few hundred feet. 
Every minute or two there was a hollow, rumbling sound, and 
the whole summit trembled. This was caused evidently by the 
concussion or swash of the contained heavy fluid lava, which 
threw into the air and against its internal wall a great number 
of bright and dark fragments, describing curves of a hundred 
or two feet. Some fell back into the center of eruption, but the 
most of them into the valley between it and the outer rim, with 
a horrible stony clatter. This valley, which is two to three hum 



84 MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 

dred feet deep and wide, had its bottom and sides lined with 
fire ; verily a bed of glowing coals. This rocket-like discharge 
occurred every two minutes, and hundreds of dazzling balls 
fell in every direction. During these terrible showers, several 
fragments, some a foot in diameter, passed over my head, but 
they were so large and few that it was easy to watch and dodge 
them. One struck near me, sending its glittering pieces all 
around. One, into which my guide plunged a piece of money, 
closed entirely about it, and formed a specimen which I still 
have in my possession. The beholder is fascinated by such 
a grand display, its novelty and unearthliness taking away all 
sense of fear. It was not, however, altogether safe, as the red- 
hot masses might come upon one in a shower from which 
there could be no escape, and a sudden change of wind might 
surround the watcher with a suffocating gas. 

The sun had now disappeared, and it was so dark from steam 
and clouds that the guide thought it prudent to return. We 
had no lanterns, and pursued our way almost at random, guided 
only by the shouts of those below us. We passed over some 
very ugly crevices, so* hot as to be uncomfortably felt even 
through thick-soled shoes. The road is easy enough by day, 
but by night sight is impossible, and the senses of hearing, 
smell and touch, and trust in Providence, must suffice to bring 
the pedestrian back to the path. 

The journey would hardly be a safe one for ladies and in- 
valids at any time of extraordinary activity. The night of our 
ascent was the most active for several weeks. I saw no flow- 
ing lava, but it could be seen on the opposite side of the rim, 
by making a long and difficult detour, impossible after dark, and 
always dangerous from the changing gas currents. 



MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VESUVIUS. 8 J 

Two days before our visit a lady came very near losing her 
life from suffocation, and was with great difficulty restored from 
a state of unconsciousness. This, however, was probably her 
salvation, as it checked the action of the lungs and heart. The 
danger was occasioned by a sudden change of wind which blew 
so strongly to the west that the smoke was unable to rise. It 
settled along the valley in which the railroad runs, and extended 
nearly to the sea. 

The grandeur of this outburst can only be appreciated after 
dark, when few persons contrive to see it. The ascent is not 
fatiguing for an average walker, though the rarefied air and 
sulphurous fumes are at first disagreeable. The light at the 
summit, seen occasionally from Naples, is the reflection or 
illumination of the white smoke by the jets of lava beneath. 
The display that I witnessed is not visible at Naples, on 
account of the distance of the eruptive cone from the edge of 
the great crater. As we approached the base the moon ap- 
peared nearly full, and the view of mountain, plain and sea 
was exceptionally fine, even for Naples. — 1882. 

The Vesuvian railway ascent is less exciting, and apparently 
less dangerous than that of Mt. Washington or the Rigi, but 
far more interesting from the black, ash-covered lava, over and 
by the side of which it passes. As an exhibition of the subter- 
ranean forces of nature, I regard an ordinary Vesuvian summit 
display as equal to that of Mayon, and inferior to the " Lake of 
Fire " at Kilauea. 

The edge of the great cone, within the partly encircling ring 
of Somma, is about a thousand feet high. It was built up by 
its own ejections during the last eighteen hundred years. Dur- 
ing this period it has been several times destroyed and re- 



88 MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES.— VESUVIUS. 

formed. The lavas of Somma differ from those of Vesuvius, 
the strata being regularly inclined at an angle of twenty-five 
to thirty degrees, and the sides covered by layers of tufa inclos- 
ing- marine tertiary shells, indicating that, like Etna, it was once 
submarine, and that the Italian, like the Sicilian shore, has un- 
dergone many hundred feet of elevation during the preceding 
and present geological ages. 

A careful comparison of the volcanic products of Japan, the 
Philippines, the Malay Archipelago and the Mediterranean, 
as well as of the Hawaiian Islands and Iceland, forces the con- 
clusion already reached by the chemical geologists, that lavas, 
from whatever locality, are one half oxygen, one fourth silicon 
(acting as an acid), one tenth aluminum, with magnesium, cal- 
cium, iron, sodium and potassium in varying proportions, and 
all from sources far beneath the surface. The more silicated 
ones, or the acid, like trachytes, are lighter in color and in 
weight than the basic or basalts, which have less silica, and 
much more magnesium, lime and iron ; they are, however, poor 
in soda and potash. 

A thick lava stream may take many years to cool. I have 
walked over a floor in Kilauea, apparently old and cold, but in 
the crevices of which the end of a cane would be burned, even 
when the material of which it was made was a very poor con- 
ductor of heat. Prof. Judd states that masses of snow, covered 
by a thick layer of scoriae in the Vesuvian eruption of 1872, 
and subsequently by lava, were found three years after con- 
solidated into ice, and not melted. It is said that Catania is 
supplied with ice from the snows buried by the ejections of 
Etna. 

The chemical study of lavas has thrown much light on the 



MEDITERRANEAN VOLCANOES. — VES UVIUS. 89 

character of the granitic rocks, which were once supposed to be 
peculiar to the- oldest geological ages. Granite is now recog- 
nized as the crystalline representative of lava, consolidated under 
the immense pressure of great depths. Syenite and diorite have 
the same chemical composition, differing only in form. The 
great granite masses are, according to Prof. Judd, the "cooled 
reservoirs from which volcanoes have in all probability been 
supplied during earlier periods of the earth's history.'' In the 
same deep recesses, with high temperature, intense pressure, 
superheated steam and acid gases, carbon becomes the crystal- 
lized diamond; alumina, the ruby and sapphire; silica, the 
amethyst, emerald, and topaz. 

The precious metals have been placed within man's reach 
by volcanic agency, brought up from the depths ; the agate, 
the onyx and the zeolite crystals have a similar origin. The 
conclusion seems justified that granite belongs to all geological 
epochs. 

To understand the causes of volcanoes it should be remem- 
bered that they occur along great lines of fissure in the earth's 
crust, and, with the present exception of the Sandwich Islands 
and Thibet, near to the limits which separate the great land 
and water masses of the globe ; that is, near the coast line, or on 
islands not far from the shore. According to Lyell, almost all 
active volcanoes are on rising areas, and are notably absent 
from those undergoing depression. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

Interest of Stromboli. — Theory of volcanoes derived from its study. — Picturesque railway to 
Catania. — Etna. — Immense lava flows. — Varied outline, depressions, and summit. — 
Monti Rossi. — Difficulty of ascent. — Observatory. — Magnificent view from summit. 
Great eruptions of 1669, 1852-53, 1865, 1874, an< 3 1879. — Crater in 1882. — Age and origin. 
— Fertility of lava soils, and utility of volcanoes. 

IN March, 1882, on the way by steamer from Naples to Sicily 
we passed near Stromboli, a volcano which has been in con- 
stant activity for two thousand years. Other smoking peaks 
in the west, among them Vulcano in the Lipari Islands, were 
plainly to be seen, and in the distance on the eastern extremity 
of the island loomed the cloud and snow-covered peak of Etna. 
As a volcano Stromboli is insignificant ; but it is of great 
interest as the one which, by the careful observations of Spal- 
lanzani and others, led to the present understanding of volcanic 
phenomena. Its action is not generally violent, but its cone, 
three thousand and ninety feet high on the line between Italy 
and Sicily, is a prominent object. When in eruption it is a 
beacon on a grand scale with its glare of red light, without 
flame, the illumination of its watery vapors from below, flashing 
from time to time, increasing and fading at irregular intervals. 
Its mass beneath the sea gives to it a total vertical height of at 
least six thousand feet, with a base under water of more than 
four miles; it has been built up by its own ejected matters, 

90 



ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 



91 



which resemble the refuse cinder and slag of a huge iron 
furnace. 

Action has apparently ceased in the central and summit 
crater. A new one has opened on the northwest side, about 
one thousand feet below the top. 

I saw Stromboli both by day and night at a week's interval, 
but it gave forth only vapors which formed a cloud that floated 
off with the wind, and were made up of rounded masses, each 
from a volcanic jet, like the rings from the smoke stack of a loco- 
motive, or from the mouth of a smoker. The eruption is from 
a circular depression two thousand feet above the water, whence 
a flat slope of thirty-five degrees, with steep walls, extends to the 
sea. Here Spallanzani, in 1788, and later, made the examina- 
tions which, extended and confirmed by others, led to the work 
of Scrope in 1825 ; the first systematic treatise on the subject. 

Prof. Judd, in his work on "Volcanoes," describes a visit to 
this volcano, April 24, 1874, when he saw one of its occasional 
outbursts from a point whence he could look directly into the 
crater. With a noise which he describes as like blowing off 
steam, he says that " a great volume of watery vapor was at the 
same time thrown violently into the atmosphere, and with it 
there were hurled upwards a number of dark fragments which 
rose to the height of four or five hundred feet;" the most 
of these fell back into the crater with a loud, rattling noise, 
but some were thrown outside, and went rolling into the sea. 
The study of the phenomena renders highly probable his expla- 
nation of a volcano as a "great natural steam-engine," whose 
supply we can neither control nor lessen, the active cause be- 
ing the escape of steam from masses of molten rocks. The 
violence of the eruption depends on the amount and tension 



^ 2 ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

of this escaping vapor, sometimes with the pressure due to 
great depths. 

He saw here the puffs of steam, the movements and overflow 
of fluid lava, and the bursting of gigantic bubbles of the viscid 
material, carrying into the air the fragments of the scum-like 
surface or glowing masses of semi-molten rocks. There was no 
flame, he says, the light being the reflection of the fiery liquid 
on the clouds of vapor above. 

Prof. Judd declares that the popular definition of a volcano 
as "a burning mountain, from the summit of which issue smoke 
and flames," is not correct. Volcanic action, he says, is neither 
burning nor combustion ; volcanoes are openings in the earth's 
crust, and only become mountains by the piling up of their own 
ejected materials. The eruption may occur at any part of their 
sides or bases, as in Kilauea, and the smoke is condensed vapor, 
while the flames are simply the reflection of the glow of the 
molten, and not burning, matters on the floating clouds over the 
crater. Of course inflammable substances are occasionally 
formed within a volcano ; these may take fire, and produce real, 
though feebly luminous, flames. But the sulphur found in 
volcanic regions is the result, and not the cause, of volcanic 
action. The whole story of the grand and the feeble outbursts 
of a volcano maybe referred to a simple cause: "the escape, 
from the midst of masses of molten materials, of imprisoned 
steam or water-gas." The island of Sicily was undoubtedly 
once connected with Italy. 

The railway from Messina to Catania, at the base of Mt. 
Etna, — a journey of two and one half hours, — is one of the 
most picturesque in Europe. It winds along the shore, with 
the blue Mediterranean on the left, and high cretaceous or 



ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 93 

volcanic cliffs on the right, — piercing the promontories by 
tunnels, crossing mountain streams, cutting through beds of 
lava, — at every turn opening to view a ruined castle, or ter- 
raced vineyards and orchards, and always with hoary-headed 
Etna looking down on all. 

The volcano of Etna is on the east side of the island. It is 
eleven thousand feet high, with a circumference, at its base, of 
nearly one hundred miles. A part of this base extends to the 
sea thirty miles distant. The angle of inclination, until near 
the summit cone, is, on an average, twenty degrees. The sides 
of the mountain are dotted with one hundred and seventy-five 
smaller cones, many deserving the name of mountains. The 
outline of the upper portion is regular and clearly defined, and 
the central crater is always emitting clouds of vapor and gases. 
Etna is the largest of the European volcanoes, and some of 
its lava flows have been immense; one, in 1669, overwhelmed 
Catania, twelve miles distant, and reached the sea. There are 
some marks of these on the mountain itself, displaying a black 
sterility seven to eight miles long, and more than a mile wide. 

As in other cases, the huge mass of Etna has been built up 
by its own ejected materials. Before the eyes can take in the 
dark outline of the ragged sides and smoking summit, they rest 
with pleasure on the smiling villages, vineyards, and forests, 
which cluster on its flanks. Even in March, when I saw it, 
though the cone was covered with snow, around its base was 
perpetual verdure. This emerald green, with its outer setting 
of the sapphire-blue of the Mediterranean, made a splendid 
contrast with the dazzling white which crowned the peak. 
This cultivated region is about ten miles wide, and extends to 
a height of over four thousand feet, but at two thousand the 



94 



ETNA AJS/D STROMBOLI. 



growth of orange and lemon ceases ; at thirty-three hundred 
there is only the apple among fruit trees, and at four thousand 
feet the vine disappears. Between this and the altitude of six 
thousand only wild vegetation remains. Six or seven miles of 
space contain the chestnut, oak, cork, beech, and pine-tree 
growths, but these gradually diminish in size and number to 
the height of sixty-six hundred feet, where only the hardiest 
plants survive, and beyond the altitude of ten thousand feet 
there is nothing but cinders, ashes, and ice. 

At the height of about ninety-six hundred and sixty feet, the 
cone is interrupted on the south side by a platform, covered 
with black sand, nine miles in circumference, limited by volcanic 
rocks and craters ; the " Piano del Lago" from which arises the 
present eruptive cone of over thirteen hundred feet. On the 
eastern side is the " Val del Bove," a depression six miles long, 
three, wide, and three fifths of a mile deep. This immense 
amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by high precipices, is 
open to the east, and is looked directly into from the town of 
Giarre. This break is generally believed to have been produced 
by a sinking in of this part of the mountain. The rocks around 
it are almost all composed of numerous horizontal layers of lava, 
interspersed with masses of scoriae, and earthy matters. These 
lavas differ from the ordinary dark ones of modern Etna in 
being of a reddish, yellow, and violet color, often containing 
large crystals, and traversed by veins of more recent eruptions, 
and of varying chemical constitution, as if, during the rending 
of the mountain, the resulting fissures had been filled with the 
new liquid matters, either before or after the upheaving of the 
main cone. Elie de Beaumont explains this depression by a 
sudden upraising of the central portion, which caused a rupture 



ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 



95 



only on the eastern side ; but Lyell, Hoffmann, and Walters- 
hausen, noticing a slight inclination of the surrounding strata 
to the southwest and north, regard it as due to a subsidence of 
the east flank. 

According to Lyell, the present active centre is nearly four 
miles from its earliest position. Gemmelaro is of opinion that 
where now is the Val del Bove was once the eruptive axis, and 
that the summit fell into the interior of the mountain, as hap- 
pened in 1779 to Papadayang, the largest of the volcanoes of 
Java. It would seem, therefore, that the volcano of Kilauea, 
on the side of Mauna Loa-, in the Sandwich Islands, at a height 
of four thousand feet, on a mountain of fourteen thousand, and 
the great chasm of the Yosemite Valley, California, can best be 
explained by a similar falling in, consequent on great subter- 
ranean dirturbance, and that ice and water, in the latter case, 
have had very little to do except in slightly rounding and pol- 
ishing projecting points. 

The ascent of Etna can only be made between July and 
October, and is at best a difficult task. Whether the start is 
made from Catania, or Aci Reale, the first day's work is to reach 
Nicolosi, twenty-four hundred feet above the sea, a village of 
about twenty-seven hundred inhabitants. Whichever direction 
is taken lava streams must be traversed, most of them old and 
covered with vegetation, with many pretty villages on the route. 
During the first hour's journey the hills are covered by a layer 
of clay, sometimes containing shells, indicating the presence of 
the sea at a remote period. After the second hour the road 
becomes more steep, running between the lava flows of 1408 
on the right, and of 1669 on the left. In two and one half to 
three hours Nicolosi is reached, and here arrangements for the 



96 ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

climb to the summit are completed. After making the ascent 
of the Monti Rossi, at the foot of which the village is situated, 
the night is passed in a comfortable hotel. It is in the middle 
of a plain of cinders, and is rather dismal-looking because of 
its lava-built houses. 

Monti Rossi is a good example of the secondary or parasitic 
cones, of which there are hundreds on the sides of Etna, 
marking its regular outline. These scoriae cones, formed along 
fissures in the primary one, were originally really black, but 
became reddish by the oxidation of the magnetic oxide of iron, 
which is found in almost all lavas. It is this color that has 
given its name to the Monti Rossi. Its cone, which appears 
double from the sinuosities of the edge of the crater, is nearly 
two miles in circumference, and eight hundred and thirty feet 
above Nicolosi, or thirty-two hundred and thirty above the sea. 
It is one of the largest craters on the mountain, and consists 
of very friable lava, containing many crystals of pyroxene or 
augite. There are several other craters along the line of fissure, 
at the bottom of one of which opens a series of caverns, end- 
ing in a large grotto, discovered by Mario Gemmelaro, in 1823. 
It was formed in 1669, when two great gulfs opened during an 
earthquake ; from these there issued such an amount of scoriae 
and sand that this cone was raised in three months. One of 
the three streams of accompanying lava flowed fourteen miles 
in six and one half weeks, to the edge of the sea, a larger one 
descending to Catania. These appear quite recent, and are, 
for the most part, dark and sterile. This alternation of the 
eruptive action from the summit to the sides has been frequent 
in its history ; the former adding to its height, the latter to its 
bulk. 



ETNA AND STROMBOLL gy 

It is the custom to start from Nicolosi, on mule back, early 
in the morning of the second day. A guide, obtained at an 
•expense of two dollars, is necessary, and as much more is to be 
expended for a mule and driver. Half a dollar pays for lodging 
in the " Etna House," at the base of the cone, and a small 
sum for each mule. For long excursions the tariff is gener- 
ally one dollar a day for mule and driver, and seventy-five cents 
for each guide. The prices are fixed by the Italian Alpine 
Club, and the men are capable and trusty. 

The first mile is over a plain of black sand, ejected from 
Monti Rossi in 1669, in which flourish some vines and fig-trees. 
The lava of 1737 is soon reached, and the ascent is now be- 
tween two lines of old craters or mountains, from six hundred 
to one thousand feet high, and largely covered with vegetation. 
Passing through another group of similar cones, in two and one 
half hours the traveller arrives at the Forest House (Casa del 
Bosco), a farm at the foot of Monte Capriolo, over four thousand 
feet above the sea, and higher than the summit of Vesuvius ; 
here travellers take rest for breakfast. 

Beyond this point the ascent becomes steep, and the air 
chilly. Plant life dwindles and disappears ; the desert begins, 
and the region of glaciers is attained. Before coming to the 
ice the Goat's Cavern is passed — in a thick layer of lava, five 
thousand three hundred and sixty feet above the sea. This 
was a convenient resting-place before the erection of the 
"House of the English," in 181 1, by officers of that nation. 
Meeting there the lava of 1766, and traversing a third group 
of cones, the flows of 1780 and 1763 are crossed. Here the 
bright-red cone of Montagnola is a conspicuous point on the 
■south flank. Climbing now begins in earnest, and the mules 



9 8 



ETNA AND STROMBOLL 



can hardly carry their burdens. After a time a vast plain of 
dry black sand, seven miles in circumference, is reached, from 
which arises the grand cone, at least one thousand two hun- 
dred and fifty feet high. The dark and barren surroundings, 
the strange shapes of the rocks, the solitude and the silence 
of this cold desert are depressing, and one sees with joy the 
" Etna House " and Observatory, after a hard day's work. This 
is at the very base of the cone — nine thousand eight hundred 
feet above the sea — and rarely, if ever, visited for one half of 
the year. 

The Observatory is of two stories, in all thirty feet high, occu- 
pying an area of about six hundred and fifty square feet. In 
the centre of each story is a large circular room with small ones 
surrounding it. In the lower story is the column for the tele- 
scope, which is placed in the upper, its lens having a diameter 
of 1 1.2 inches, covered by a movable iron dome. It is placed 
on a small cone, which, judging from the past, will protect it 
from the lava in case of eruption, as the streams always flow 
on the opposite side of the volcano. The Vesuvian observatory 
is only two thousand and sixty-five feet above the sea; the Hos- 
pice of St. Gothard six thousand eight hundred and fifteen ; of 
St. Bernard eight thousand three hundred. For a long time 
this latter was the highest inhabited spot in Europe ; but the 
observatory on Etna is one thousand five hundred feet higher. 
The " Etna House," an annex of the Observatory, is an enlarge- 
ment of the old " House of the English," and can accommodate 
a dozen persons ; travellers stop here to dine, and to pass a part 
of the night. Food is brought and prepared by the guides. 
The arrival is before sunset, and the panorama of mountain, 
forest, field and sea is extensive and magnificent beyond de- 



ETNA AND STROMBOLL 



99 



scription. It embraces the coasts of Sicily, as far as Malta, and, 
in a clear day, the African shores ; the sun shines on the sum- 
mit after the plains are shrouded in darkness, and the effects of 
light and shadow are wonderful. The air is chilly even in sum- 
mer; it is near the freezing point, and the fire in the chimney 
of black lava is very necessary. 

One hundred and seventy-five feet below the Observatory is 
a ruin about twenty-five feet square, called the " Philosopher's 
Tower." Tradition declares it to have been inhabited by 
Empedocles, who, 400 b. c, pretending to be a god, and, in 
support of his claim, plunged into the volcano, that his body 
might not be found; but the ejection of one of his brass san- 
dals unfortunately revealed the deception. It is, however, much 
more likely that it is the ruin of the hut erected by the Em- 
peror Hadrian, when he ascended Etna in the early part of 
the second century. 

The mules must now be left, and the ascent made on foot, be- 
ginning the journey soon after midnight, by the light of torches 
or the moon. The stream of 1838 is soon reached; steam 
is seen issuing from numerous cracks, and at the bottom red- 
dish reflections are noticeable at nio:ht. The crater-cone varies 
from one thousand to one thousand two hundred feet in height, 
and is difficult of ascent on account of the scoriae, ashes and 
sand which yield beneath the foot ; the ascent is possible only 
by following the flow of 1863. An hour's climb brings one to 
the summit, at the south edge of the crater, the surrounding 
rocks being very hot, with abundant emissions of steam and sul- 
phurous gases. By watching an opportunity, when the wind 
is favorable, one can get, stretched on the rocks, a peep into 
the immense gulf, though ordinarily nothing can be seen but a 



IOO 



ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 



dense vapor, more or less illuminated by the molten masses 
below. 

As I saw it from between Aci Reale and Nicolosi, in March,. 
1882, the outline of the crater was as follows : — 




SUMMIT OF ETNA, MARCH, 1552. 

Smoking all along the tipper ridge, but most on the north side. 

1. Apparently patches of snow. 3. Val del Bove ; arrow pointing to Giarre. 

2. White; probably incrustation around edge. 4. Observatory. 

5. Piano del Lago. 

If the sunset from Etna is mao-nificent, sunrise is even more 
striking, as the sun appears at the summit while night reigns 
at its base and on the opposite side. As the light chases away 
the darkness, the effects seem like natural magic on an immense 
scale ; cones, before invisible, come into view like black mon- 
sters, and the flanks bristle with secondary volcanic ridges and 
craters, which impair its symmetry, while increasing its grandeur 
from above. 

The form of the crater has changed much within the last 
four centuries. In 1444 the central cone fell in ; in 1537 anew 
one was formed, which was destroyed in 1669; in 1744-45 



ETNA AND STROMBOLI. IO i 

another appeared, the southern segment of which sank down in 
1756, and is recognizable at the present time. Before 1879, the 
crater was about four thousand three hundred and thirty feet in 
circumference, oval in form, its greatest diameter being one 
thousand five hundred feet, and, as the eruption of that year 
sent forth only gases and ashes, it probably has about these 
dimensions now. According to Silvestri, who is to Etna what 
Palmieri is to Vesuvius, it was at that time possible to descend 
into it, the bottom consisting of scoriae and lava at a depth of 
two hundred feet. Since then it has not been entered. This sur- 
face was dotted with white, yellow and red incrustations, and in 
the middle opened a vast pit, some two thousand feet in circum- 
ference, in which could be seen and heard the movements of 
the liquid matters agitated by the escaping gases. 

The violence of Etna's eruptions was known long before the 
Christian era. The earthquakes, fissures and lava flows were, 
by the old myths, attributed to the struggles of the rebellious 
giant Typhon, who was overthrown by the thunderbolts of 
Jupiter, and buried beneath the volcano. In the Middle Ages 
its fires were looked upon as the place of torment of Anne Bo- 
leyn, the Protestant queen of Henry the Eighth, and the mother 
of Queen Elizabeth. As in other volcanoes, subterranean noises, 
earthquakes and volumes of smoke and vapor, precede in Etna 
the ejection of stones, scoriae and lavas, either from the summit 
crater or rents in the sides. The stream in its progress fills 
valleys, obliterates rivers, burns up the forests and dwellings, 
and overwhelms fields and villages. Flowing ordinarily at the 
rate of seventeen to twenty feet in a minute, the crust hardens 
quickly, its glassy surface cracks continually, and its rolling 
masses clink together with a dull metallic sound. 



102 ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

The most terrible of the earthquakes accompanying an erup- 
tion was in 1693, from the eighth to the eleventh of January. 
Houses fell by hundreds in Catania, the sea penetrated the city, 
the vessels in the harbor tossed against each other, the bells in 
the churches were rung, and the cries of thousands of victims 
mingled with the internal rumblings, the roar of the waves and 
the detonations of the mountain. The city was reduced to 
heaps of ruins, and at least sixteen thousand persons perished. 

In 1669, twenty-four years before the above, occurred the 
greatest eruption of modern times ; on the eleventh of March, 
after three days of tremblings, a huge fissure opened on the 
south side. It was twelve miles in length, beginning about a 
mile below the summit, and bordered by many small craters near 
Nicolosi ; a lava torrent, more than a mile wide, issued from 
these numerous craters, advanced rapidly toward Catania, and 
destroyed two mountain villages. It then met with an obstacle, 
and divided into two branches : one, one third of a mile in 
width, greatly damaged three hamlets; the other, which had 
acquired a breadth of nearly two miles, went toward Belpasso, 
and there meeting an obstruction, again divided into two, the 
smaller flowing a little more than a mile, and the larger, a mile 
wide, passing rapidly toward Catania. In a few hours the lava 
filled a small lake and its inclosing valley, and in five weeks 
reached the western boulevard, surmounted a wall sixty feet 
high, covering many of the ancient ruins, filled the streets of 
that section, and completely surrounded the old castle of Ur- 
sine In two weeks more it began to throw itself into the sea, 
with a width of one half of a mile, and a thickness of forty feet. 
The flow advanced thirteen miles in three weeks, but only 
twenty-two feet an hour for the last two miles toward the water ; 



ETNA AND STROMBOLI. [03 

it retained a great heat for eight years after. Fourteen villages 
were overwhelmed, and the earthquakes destroyed all the houses 
in Nicolosi. The cone of Monti Rossi was formed at this time, 
in three months; it gave forth seven hundred and sixty million 
tons of lava, covering a surface of nearly nine thousand five 
hundred acres, a considerable part of which was productive 
soil. 

The summit eruption of March, 1755, is geologically of great 
interest, as the sudden melting of the accumulated snow and 
ice caused a flood to pour through the Val del Bove to the sea, 
in a channel one and three fourth miles wide, and over thirty 
feet deep, conveying sixteen million cubic feet of water, — the 
estimated volume in a mile, — carrying an immense amount of 
loose materials, in one and a half minutes, for more than twelve 
miles. This not only did no important excavating work, but 
really filled up the lower part of the valley, contributing largely 
to the coast deposits in the vicinity of Giarre. 

The eruption of 1852-53, though but slightly destructive, is 
the largest on record, except that of 1669, and that of Mojo, 400 
b. c. It began August 20, 1852, and continued until May 27, 
1853 a period of more than nine months. The united width of 
the lava streams was two miles, with a depth from eight to six- 
teen feet, piled up in some places to one hundred feet. It 
reached to near Zafarana, — almost six miles, — descending 
thirty-five hundred feet in sixteen days. The Val del Bove, 
from the upper part of which it proceeded, looked like a sea 
of fire. Explosions, as of artillery, were frequently heard, and 
the scoriae were sent up to great heights. The summit sympa- 
thized with the lateral openings, and emitted enormous volumes 
of vapor, ending in a white incrustation which is still to be 



104 ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

seen, and has the appearance of snow. The heat was such that 
trees at a distance of several feet took fire. 

On the evening of January 30, 1865, the mountain was rent 
on the northeastern side of its middle portion, and sent out a 
torrent of lava which grew by degrees to a width of one and one 
half miles wide ; it filled up a large valley, and, after a course of 
eight miles, was arrested at a height of about twenty-seven hun- 
dred feet above the sea. Seven craters formed along the fissure, 
in violent eruption, the materials rolling like blocks of ice in a 
river, and forming lateral and terminal moraines, as in a glacier. 

On the twenty-ninth of August, 1874, a large fissure opened 
on the north side, and an eruption, which threatened to be a 
grand one, commenced ; but it diminished on the second day, 
and very soon ceased. Along its path, at the bottom of which 
Prof. Silvestri saw the glowing lava, more than thirty scoria 
cones were thrown up. After this abortive attempt Prof. Silvestri 
prophesied that the next eruption would be along the line which 
remained open ; a prediction which was fulfilled on the twenty- 
sixth of May, 1879. 

During this eruption the shock of the fused matters was so 
great that it produced on the opposite, or south-southwest side, 
a fracture three thousand feet long and one hundred feet wide, 
at an elevation of more than two thousand feet above the north- 
northeastern opening ; presenting the singular phenomenon of 
an eruption on both sides of the mountain. Two small streams 
of lava issued from it, which passed through fifteen feet of snow, 
but stopped on the next day, after a course of little more than 
a mile. The volcanic activity then concentrated itself on the 
lower opening, from whose numerous craters was ejected a 
torrent one thousand feet wide, which flowed rapidly toward 



ETNA AND STROMBOLL 10 ^ 

Mojo, a small village on the north-northeast base of Etna. At 
the same time there was a dense shower of ashes and sand, 
which extended over an area of eighteen miles. Advancing at 
a rate of twelve to sixteen feet in a minute, on the morning of 
the twenty-eighth it had passed over four miles, burning thou- 
sands of pines and oaks. By night it had crossed the national 
road, following the course of a mountain stream whose bridge it 
destroyed. The fright of the people was extreme, but of short 
duration, for its progress became slower ; from eight hundred to 
two hundred and fifty feet a day. It finally stopped two thou- 
sand feet from the river Alcantara. The flow was six miles 
long, with an average width of one quarter of a mile. On two 
of the secondary craters was formed a conical, double-cratered 
mountain, six hundred feet high, called Umberto-Margarita, in 
honor of the king and queen of Italy. Four groups of smaller 
mountains were also formed. This eruption lasted eleven days, 
and gave issue to nearly twenty-three and one half million tons 
of lava, covering a surface of about seventy-five acres. 

The crater, as I saw it in the middle of March, 1882, was very 
much as it was left after the eruption of May and June, 1879. 
Vapor was rising apparently from almost all the south rim, in 
a crevice running from west to east, but originating so far below 
the edge as to leave the outside patches of snow unmelted. The 
white, snow-like appearance near the upper portion may have 
been the white incrustation above alluded to. The edge could 
be clearly traced far to the northeast, and the whole surface in 
that direction seemed to be smoking. 

Etna, or Mongibello, has had two permanent craters of erup- 
tion, like Mauna Loa and Kilauea in the Hawaiian Islands, and 
Somma and Vesuvius ; the smaller was in the middle of what is 



I06 ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

now the Val del Bove, which was the result of depression and 
not of upheaval ; the " Piano del Lago " is probably a filled-up 
crater. The alluvium at Giarre is ten miles long by three wide, 
and more than one hundred feet thick, and is proof that aqueous 
denudation has considerably modified it since the paroxysmal 
explosion of the old cone on the side and engulfment. This 
was, probably, toward the close of the glacial period, when the 
ice was much more extensive, and would afford ample source 
of aqueous denudation. Aerial disintegration must also have 
exerted a powerful influence in this elevated valley, which em- 
braces about one sixth of the great mass. It now contains no 
cattle, as its name would import ; a few goats clamber about its 
lower precipices, and vegetable life is represented chiefly by the 
yellow ragwort and autumn crocus (colchictim). 

According to Prof. Lyell, the chief mass of Etna, or that 
of sub-aerial origin, is of the post-pliocene age, its foundations 
being laid in the sea which then covered the present site of 
the mountain. This was raised by the outpouring of lava and 
scoriae, and the slow uprising of the whole region, and may thus 
explain the presence of marine shells in tertiary strata many 
hundred feet above the sea-level. 

The last recorded eruption of Etna was in May, 1886. This 
came near overwhelming Nicolosi. The great lava stream 
moved at a rate of one hundred and thirty-five feet an hour, 
and came within half a mile of the village ; the inhabitants 
fled, terror stricken ; several dwellings were destroyed, but no 
lives were lost. 

According to M. Fouque, the temperatures at which certain 
chemical deposits and vapors are produced at Etna are as fol- 
lows : — At the highest heat, which is sufficient to melt copper 




Mk \, : .C>. I 



/ 






ETNA AND STROMBOLL 109 

and silver, there are the alkaline chlorides of soda and potash ; 
at the melting point of zinc, chlorohydric and sulphuric acids, 
with watery vapor ; at two hundred and twelve degrees Fahren- 
heit, or a little over, steam, with sulphuric acid and sulphur ; 
and lastly, as in the ordinary state, pure water. 

As one travels among this volcanic scenery, it is strange to 
see by the side of, or amidst the lava flows, vines, oranges, 
lemons, and almonds, growing luxuriantly. Every stage of 
soil development may be traced from utter barrenness to fer- 
tility, and the humble natural instruments may be recognized 
by which this beneficent change is commenced and carried on. 
As soon as disintegration of the lava from the action of the 
elements begins, reddish-yellow or orange lichens (stereocaulon) 
appear in large patches ; then seeds of weeds and grasses, 
brought by birds and winds, vegetate ; cacti, large and fleshy, 
follow, naturally, or planted by man, in every favoring crevice; 
and hardy shrubs and bushes here and there find sustenance. 
With the aid of frost, snow, sun and rain permeating the porous 
surfaces and oxidating the iron, the roots break up the crumbling 
lava, and finally reduce it to powder ; man adds fertilizers, and 
waters brooms and plants which annually decay, and in the 
course of a few years the rugged, desolate lava becomes a grass 
plot, a vineyard, or a lemon orchard. Hundreds of these little 
oases in the desert, with a very black and productive soil, are 
seen in the course of a mile; giving to the base and lower 
sides of Etna the semblance of verdant fields. Many and popu- 
lous villages dot the flanks of the volcano, in what would seem 
to be dangerous situations, verifying the saying of Buffon, that 
wherever man can get his daily bread, he will be found, even in 
presence of daily peril. 



IIO ETNA AND STROMBOLI. 

Volcanoes are, therefore, not wholly bad, and are by no means 
so destructive as is popularly believed ; life is rarely sacrificed, 
and ample time is generally given for escape and the removal 
of valuables. Japan and Java, populous and productive, are 
over volcanic centres. Between the two rivers which inclose 
Etna live three hundred and thirty thousand people ; nine hun- 
dred and sixty-five to a square mile ; six times as many as in 
any other part of Italy. The soil at the base of Vesuvius is 
the most fertile in Europe ; surpassing the suburbs at Paris, and 
equalled only in the vicinity of New York. These " smoking 
hills " are, therefore, rather preservative than destructive, as they 
prepare the undermined crust of the earth to follow down upon 
the shrinking and cooling centre, by local, rather than wide- 
spread, convulsions. 

During the year 1887 Etna has been, at irregular intervals, 
more active than usual ; but nothing deserving the name of an 
eruption has been chronicled. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. TAAL, MAYON, AND TIBI GEYSERS. 

Volcano of Taal. — Volcano of Mayon. — Its symmetrical shape. — In eruption for more than 
a year. — Beautiful both by night and day. — Native fear of it. — Various unsatisfactory 
attempts to ascend it. — Its chief eruptions. — Catastrophe of 1814. — Geysers at Tibi. — 
The red and the white cones. — An uncanny spot. — Silicious incrustations. — Usual 
causes. 

IN January, 1882, in company with the American Consul, I 
visited the district of the Laguna, or Lake of Bay, south- 
east of Manila, the capital of Luzon, the largest of the Philip- 
pine Islands. The trip was by steamer up the Pasig River. 

One of the stopping places is Calamba, the point of depart- 
ure for visitors to the Lake of Bonbon and the volcano of Taal, 
distant over land some twenty miles. Usually, long before the 
lake is visible, volumes of white vapor are seen rising above the 
surrounding hills. The lake is about seventy miles in circum- 
ference, oval, mostly inclosed in high, wooded land, with here 
and there overhanging cliffs. 

The island of Volcan is in the centre of the lake, and was 
doubtless upheaved during a volcanic convulsion. It presents 
a very ragged and timeworn appearance. The approach from 
the north is amid some fine mountain scenery. The island is 
reached after a two hours' paddle over its ashy, still waters, 
which are not very palatable from their iron, volcanic taste. 

The volcano is very difficult to climb, as it is a mass of yield- 



112 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 

ing cinders and sharp clinkers from bottom to top, of every size 
and shape, and it is rent by dangerous chasms and precipices. 
It is one thousand two hundred feet high, and a good hour's 
climb. The oval, ragged rim of the crater is six miles in cir- 
cumference, with precipitous sides of unmeasured depth. In 
the bottom is a black pit, about five hundred feet in diame- 
ter, and a sulphurous lake constantly emitting suffocating, but 
invisible fumes. Its descent, of many hundred feet, is dan- 
gerous. 

Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer, very nearly lost his life in 
attempting to descend this crater, and was only drawn out by 
ropes, fortunately attached to him, in an insensible condition. 
The air is so clear within the crater that small objects can be 
distinctly seen through the azure, and, doubtless, sulphurous 
atmosphere. It was not visibly smoking during our visit to the 
Laguna. 

In the latter part of December, 1881, I found myself on board 
a steamer bound from Iloilo to the island of Luzon in the prov- 
ince of the Camarines, and especially to that part of the island 
known as Legaspi, on the eastern side of the peninsula on 
which the volcano of Mayon is situated. 

We had the first sight of the mountain of Mayon on the 
western side, at Donzol, watching it until late at night, when 
the view was cut off by the high lands around which we were 
to sail. We passed through the Straits of San Bernardino to 
Legaspi, and by daybreak we had rounded the point where 
we again beheld Mayon to the west of us. 

There is something grand in this symmetrical peak, a typical 
volcano, rising over seven thousand feet from the water's edge, 
and displaying here, on the verge of the Pacific, its pillar of 



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PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. H 5 

cloud by day and its pillar of fire by night. It is the beacon of 
the mariner coming westward from Polynesia, with no land to 
the east nearer than the Ladrone or Marianne Islands, over 
one thousand two hundred miles away. 

Landing at Legaspi we rode to Daraga, a few miles distant, 
to get the nearest and best view of the volcano, and to see the 
traces of the great eruption of 1S14, which destroyed the old 
town, then situated higher up the mountain. The new town of 
Daraga is within five miles of the base of the mountain ; near 
it are the remains of the church, and ether buildings then over- 
whelmed, their ruins projecting from the masses of rocks and 
ashes. Pieces of lava, six feet in diameter, were thrown from 
the crater to a distance of five miles. 

During our Christmas dinner the summit was all ablaze, and 
presented the most magnificent volcanic exhibition I ever wit- 
nessed. It was neither so awe-inspiring as Kilauea, nor so ter- 
rible as the fiery shower at the top of Vesuvius, already de- 
scribed ; but it was majestic in the distance which assured safety, 
sublime in its altitude, and glorious in its constant outpouring 
of red-hot lava which trickled down its side like a cataract of 
fire. We had rare glimpses of the summit during the day, 
which was cloudy, but at night could only see the lurid glow 
which showed that the cauldron was still running over. 

During the forenoon a crack opened on the Legaspi side, 
considerably below the top. From this was sent out an im- 
mense quantity of white smoke or vapor, and clouds of ashes 
which settled near its source. During the night there was a 
hardly perceptible earthquake trembling ; but these disturbances 
are very common, though severe ones are rare,. perhaps on ac- 
count of the proximity of Mayon's safety valve. 



n 6 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 

The cone of Mayon is one of the most symmetrical in the 
world, both to the naked eye and through a glass ; its lavas are 
mostly felspathic, being doleritic, like those of Etna. I ob- 
tained and brought home many characteristic specimens of the 
old and the new lava, taken from as high up the mountain as 
the barefooted natives could go. 

By day I could detect no movement, as this was chiefly be- 
neath the rapidly-cooling external crust. I could see only the 
curling, light-colored vapor ; the black lava, apparently still ; 
calcined reddish-white and yellowish rocks ; and beds of grayish 
cinders of considerable size and great steepness. Green vege- 
tation extends far up, and in pointed tongues, amid the desola- 
tion of the peak, where it is not destroyed by the heat or ren- 
dered impossible of growth by lava. 

At night the scene was truly magnificent and unique. At. 
the date of my visit the volcano had poured out, for five months, 
continuously, a stream of lava on the Legaspi side, from the- 
very summit. The viscid mass bubbled quietly but grandly, 
and over-ran the border of the crater, descending several hun- 
dred feet in a glowing wave, like red-hot iron. Gradually fad- 
ing as the upper surface cooled, it changed to a thousand 
sparkling rills among the crevices, and, as it passed beyond 
the line of complete vision behind the woods near the base, 
the fires twinkled like stars, or the scintillations of a dying con- 
flagration. More than half of the mountain's height was thus 
illuminated. 

Mayon has always been an object of superstitious fear to the 
natives, and a welcome light to the old Spanish galleons with 
their freight of silver from Acapulco. To remove the dread of 
the Indians, it was visited in 1592 by two Franciscan monks,, 



PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. ll y 

one of whom, Estaban Solis, is believed to have nearly, if not 
quite, reached the summit. At all events he ascended as far as 
the suffocating gases permitted, and far enough to satisfy these 
simple children of Nature that there dwelt in the fire mountain 
no evil spirit who could injure them. This fear removed, the 
natives came to the priests for baptism, and thus was laid the 
foundation for the Christian civilization of the district. It was 
literally a baptism of fire for the monk, for, though he returned 
apparently unharmed, he fell sick and died within a year after 
his terrible experience. 

It is stated that two young Scotchmen ascended to the crater 
in 1858. They found the task a very difficult one, as the steep 
cone was one mass of sand and cinders, interspersed with ragged 
clinkers and lava. They do not claim to have been there more 
than three minutes, on account of the sulphurous gases, and it 
is scarcely probable that they saw down into the crater, as they 
do not describe it. Then, as now, the ruddy glow of night gave 
place by day to the black and sombre colors of the lava, sur- 
mounted by the white vapor. 

Jagor, in 1859, recounts the incidents of his ascension, stat- 
ing that in eight hours, after leaving the height of one thousand 
feet, where he passed the night, he attained the summit. He 
found, beyond his starting point, a luxuriant vegetation, which 
gradually diminished to lichens, and above these was the naked 
rock. The top was cracked in all directions, emitting suffocat- 
ing vapors, which compelled him to close his nostrils and mouth 
with his handkerchief. Though he could not look into the 
crater, he believed he was on its edge. He stood upon a layer 
of hard rock, which was about two feet thick, and covered with 
scoriae blanched by the action of sulphurous gases. Many irreg- 



Il8 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 

ular blocks of this had evidently formed a higher point of the 
peak. 

From the side opposite Daraga there had flowed a stream of 
lava, the surface of which consisted of such fine and spongy 
material that it looked like a carpet of moss. At my visit the 
cone appeared sharper in its uppermost portion than is por- 
trayed on any representation that I have seen. In the rainy 
season good views of the volcano are rare, as, from its size and 
height, it arrests the clouds from the Northeast Pacific, and 
these pour their contents in hundreds of rills from its blistered 
sides. 

The first historic notice of its eruptions is that of 1616. The 
first destructive one was on October 23, 1766. It completely 
overwhelmed Malinao, and did great damage to the neighboring 
villages. It began on July 20, lasting six days, with a pyramidal 
light gradually diminishing. From the summit a stream of lava 
one hundred feet wide, descended for two days to the east ; on 
the twenty-third of October such a quantity of water was dis- 
charged, apparently from the volcano, but, probably, from some 
other source, that rivers eighty to two hundred feet wide rushed 
down its sides to the sea with such violence as to set back the 
in-coming tide. A furious tempest raged from seven p. m. to 
three a. m., from northwest to south, washing away the roads, 
and was, no doubt, the source of the water attributed to the 
volcano. I do not think there is any well-authenticated in- 
stance of a volcano throwing out water, except as this results 
from heavy rains, from melting snow or ice, or from elevated 
and dislocated lakes formed by subterranean upheavals or 
depressions. 

The most destructive of the eruptions of Mayon was that of 



PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 



II 9 



February 1,1814. It began at eight a. m., and was preceded by 
frequent earthquake shocks on the evening and morning be- 
fore. There was suddenly shot out a column of stones, sand 
and ashes to a great height, obscuring the sides, down which a 
river of fire was seen to descend. As the darkness increased 
the people fled to the highest points ; the glowing stones fell so 
thickly that there was no safety in the burning houses, and 
Daraga was turned to ashes. This was followed by a shower 
of sand until after noon. Where the day before had been cul- 
tivated fields was now only a barren waste of sand and stones 
to a depth of twenty to thirty feet. In some villages the cocoa 
palms were buried nearly to their tips, while in others the layer 
was scarcely a foot thick ; the top of the mountain appeared to 
have lost over one hundred feet of its height. 

In the narrative of the "Wilkes Exploring Expedition," 
Isarog, an extinct volcano in another province, seems to have 
been confounded with Mayon. 

Earthquakes are comparatively rare at Albay, though Sorso- 
gon was almost destroyed in 1840, and the houses are not built, 
as in Manila, to withstand their shocks. Submarine disturb- 
ances are common. In 1865 Malinao and Tabaco were inun- 
dated by a tidal wave. 

I was informed by a gentleman of Albay that, in 1853, he 
ascended to or near the crater, and that the task was not diffi- 
cult for a vigorous and expert climber. Whether he attained 
the summit or not is, of course, uncertain, but I fancy that the 
condition of the mountain is a far more important element for 
success than the strength of the man ; human valor and endur- 
ance cannot prevail against lava currents, showers of burning 
cinders, and suffocating gases. 



I2 o PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 

A correspondent of " Nature," July 22, 1886, writes of Mayon, 
then in eruption : " I tried the ascent, and climbed to about 
five thousand feet, when incandescent stones and ashes obliged 
me to come quickly down. I crossed a patch of forest half- 
burnt, and covered with ashes ; the sight was magnificent ; I 
never saw anything like it as a sublime scene of devastation : 
ashes and stones and smoke everywhere, and fearful noise like 
heavy artillery all around." 

One of our fellow passengers, an Italian, had come from 
Thibet, expressely to ascend Mayon. He was a professed 
mountain climber, and had explored the summits of Mauna Loa, 
Tongaria in New Zealand, Mt. Etna, Mt. Blanc, Vesuvius, the 
mountains of Mexico, Central America, and California. He 
had made the ascent of Fujiyama in winter, and had just re- 
turned from Mt. Everest in the Himalayas, which he had 
explored to a height of over twenty thousand feet. When, 
therefore, I say that this daring, self-reliant, and expert mount- 
aineer was forced to give up Mayon as insurmountable, some 
idea may be formed of the difficulty, if not the impossibility of 
the undertaking, and a reasonable suspicion may be entertained 
that no one has ever as yet actually stood upon the edge of its 
summit crater. 

One afternoon in December, 1881, we started in a carriage 
from Tabaco, for Tibi or Tiouy, to visit the warm springs or 
geysers. The road was as bad as lava blocks, tenacious mud 
and holes could make it ; the streams, all of which can be forded 
in a vehicle, show, by the color of the stones in their beds, that 
the water is impregnated with iron. We reached Tibi in an 
hour and a quarter. Here we again met our Italian mountaineer, 
who, satisfied that he could not ascend Mayon in its present 



PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. l2 \ 

•condition, consoled himself by taking the sulphur baths, for 
which the place is famous. 

After a walk of a mile, over a muddy and slippery path, we 
came to the spring, bubbling from a cauldron surrounded by 
stones so hot that we could not cross without making a long 
detour. By the side of the hot sulphurous water flows a mount- 
ain rivulet, clear and cold. Both waters are conducted into a 
rude hut, where, stretched on a bamboo frame, the tourist may 
lie in the bottom of the running stream, the admixture of the 
hot and cold water being regulated at the will of the bather. 
The baths are considered very efficacious in rheumatic and 
cutaneous affections. The whole region is the bed of a river, 
and the surface is covered for several acres with rounded, water- 
worn bowlders of various sizes, among which in places bubble 
up the sulphurous jets ; the earth on the sides is a greasy-feel- 
ing, ^many-colored clay, the result of decomposition and depo- 
sition by the acid waters, which the natives use for washing 
purposes. 

About a mile from these baths, in the village of Naga, are the 
" manantiales " or geysers of Luzon. These are similar to the 
geysers of Iceland, though none of them now are " spouters." 
After slipping about on the unctuous mud, wading through hot 
silicious puddles, and jumping from one smooth rock to another, 
I finally, alone, came to an open space some five hundred feet 
in diameter, in whose nearly level surface were several holes, 
from three to eight inches across. From these steam was issu- 
ing, in which, at no great depth, could be heard the sizzling of 
boiling water. As in Iceland, the ground is honey-combed, and 
one fears to tread heavily, lest he should be plunged into a fiery 
cauldron. I had no guide, as the natives from superstitious 



122 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 

fears avoid these places, and I did not therefore dare to explore 
the uncanny spots as thoroughly as I wished. 

The principal activity was at what is called the " white cone." 
This is a mound of moderate elevation, and is the top of a 
closed geyser, though an active source of heat. Columns of 
steam are constantly rising from it, and from the base of the 
stalagmitic silicious mass issue several small streams of hissing 
hot water, incrusting everything about them with silicate of 
lime, and flowing away in all directions in minute, irregular, and 
gradually diminishing volume. The " red cone," though now 
extinct, was a spouting geyser thirty years ago. It is to-day 
only an emitter of steam, and receives its name from its color. 
It projects about fifteen feet above the rim of its basin, and is a 
very symmetrical and beautiful object. As it is dangerous in 
its ever-changing surroundings, I could not attain the edge of 
its cavity. Between the cones is a basin, like the " pool " in 
Iceland, with white incrusted bank. The water is boiling hot, 
and is of such clearness that the sides — attached sticks, or 
whatever has fallen or been thrown in — can be seen many 
fathoms deep ; it is exquisitely beautiful, peaceful, fascinating, 
and fairy-like. 

The spouting action has long since ceased. The red cone is 
a dead geyser, the white is a dying one ; but in their life they 
made, and in their death they preserve, silicious and apparently 
indestructible forms of great variety, shape and size, paralleled 
in Iceland, and surpassed only by those of the Yellowstone 
Park and New Zealand. Cones, cylinders, pyramids, mounds, 
in layers of every color and thickness, alternate with trickling 
streams, bubbling pot-holes, and quiet basins, with a fringe of 
gorgeous clays and a border of verdant hills. Here and there 



PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. l2 X 

are circular ridges, three to four inches high, and from one to 
four feet in diameter. These are of white silicious material, 
with level, but irregular bottoms ; the skeleton mouths of 
former living geysers ; while other funereal monuments of the 
dead springs are the laminated white mounds and stalagmites. 
One of the most characteristic accompaniments of these phe- 
nomena is the faithfulness with which the most delicate objects, 
such as the nervures and lines of leaves, are copied by the 
wonderful galvanoplasty of the waters. 

As explanatory of these geysers, I was glad to find that, though 
five miles from the sea,, and only a few feet above its level, 
they were very near a mountain stream. The volcanic products 
are acted on by acid vapors ; oxide of iron and the alkalies unite 
with sulphuric, chlorohydric, and carbonic acids, forming com- 
pounds which are carried away by the rains ; leaving the silica, 
silicate of alumina, and sulphate of lime, as incrustations in 
white powdery masses and colored clays. All of these are seen 
within a radius of half a mile, in this valley. Here, as elsewhere, 
the motive power is imprisoned steam ; the water is derived 
from the stream in the valley, the heat from the contraction of 
the shrinking nucleus. The surrounding mountains supply the 
necessary crushing force, the water is at hand, and the Philip- 
pines are situated over a volcanic fissure. 

This fissure extends from the Kurile Islands to Java, Aus- 
tralia and New Zealand, in a line of fracture, or at least of weak- 
ness, embracing more than one hundred and twenty degrees of 
latitude, and nearly the same longitude. Once established over 
a line of fissure or weakness, from the movement of immensely 
thick sedimentary deposits, the underlying floor of rock would 
be so modified by the heat as to perpetuate the phenomena in 



I2 4 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 

that place. In other words, the wrinkling and subsidence due 
to the contracting nucleus would coincide with the line of great- 
est sedimentation. This would cause a permanent channel of 
least resistance, along which the volcano, earthquake, geysers 
and mineral springs would, perhaps for centuries, occur, or would 
recur, until the subterranean energy had died out. 

As a general rule a volcano, like the geyser, builds itself up 
by its own erupted materials into a high mountain. When it 
attains a height to which the interior forces can no longer pro- 
ject its lavas, it becomes a smoker, and either bursts out lower 
down, or dies away with the decadence of the heated action. 
Mud volcanoes, like those of Java, or the remarkable one of 
1868, at Kapapala, Hawaii, previously described, are interme- 
diate between the geyser and the lava-ejecting volcano. Mayon 
was again in eruption, without earthquakes, during 1887. 



CHAPTER IX. 

JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

Fujiyama. — Geysers and mineral springs. — Symmetry and sacred character. — Its ascent 
for the first time in winter. — A perilous undertaking. — Krakatoa, Java. — Greatest 
eruption of modern times. — New Zealand. — Destruction of the famous geysers, and the 
pink and white terraces. — Earthquakes precede the volcanic disturbances. 

THE Japanese Islands are volcanic, and are very often 
shaken by earthquakes. Their volcanoes, both from the 
difficulty of access, and the restrictions placed upon foreigners, 
are not well known. The great volcano of Fujiyama, however, 
is familiar alike in its outline and its principal characteristics 
to travellers and fanciers of Japanese art. 

Wishing to obtain a near view of Fujiyama [or Fujisan,] and 
not being able to ascend it in October, on account of the snow 
on its sides and summit, we first went by way of jinrikisha 
and kango to Myanoshita, which, on account of its springs and 
mineral waters, is the Saratoga of Japan. In the afternoon of 
an October day we strolled a few miles among the mountains 
to the Ko-gigoko (or " little hell"). This name and other sim- 
ilar ones show that the place of torment has terrified the 
simple people of Japan for many centuries. 

Ko-gigoko is simply a boiling spring of sulphurous water, 
emitting fumes and steam, and bordered by yellowish incrusta- 
tions. It presents an uncanny scene amid the pretty sur- 
rounding hills. 

125 



126 JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

We next proceeded to Hakone and its Swiss-like lake, pass- 
ing on the way Ashinoyu, whose noted sulphur baths a few 
people were enjoying. We went by the great Tokaido road, 
lined and shaded by magnificent cedars (cryptomeria). We had 
here for an hour a grand view of Fujiyama, white with snow, its 
great peak hidden by clouds, as is usual in the afternoon. 

Nothing can be more majestic than this volcano, extinct 
though it be, rising from the plain to the height of over twelve 
thousand feet, truncated at the top, and with its peak almost 
always snow-covered. Its ascent is not difficult to an expert 
climber, and has frequently been made. From its summit is 
unfolded a panorama beyond the power of words to describe, 
and probably the most remarkable on the globe. Mountains, 
valleys, lakes, forests, and the villages of thirteen counties, may 
be seen. The crater is volcanic, and the top is brownish lava. 
There is abundant evidence throughout the islands of volcanic 
action, and geysers, hot springs, active craters and frequent 
earthquakes indicate that the subterranean forces are still very 
active. As we gazed upon its beautifully curved cone, visible 
even from Yokohama and a hundred miles at sea, we did not 
wonder that it should be regarded as a holy mountain, and that 
it should form a conspicuous object in every Japanese work of 
art; it is to the natives as Mt. Blanc is to Europeans, the 
"monarch of mountains." 

In summer pilgrimages are made around the base of the sum- 
mit, and there are a number of Buddhist temples and shrines, 
made of blocks of stone, for devotion, shelter and storing food 
for the pilgrims. Fujiyama became extinct in 1708. 

Hakone Lake is three thousand feet above the sea, and prob- 
ably lies in the crater of an extinct volcano. Its waters are very 



JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 127 

deep ; it is several miles long and wide, and is surrounded by 
high hills which abound in fine scenery, solfataras and mineral 
springs. We crossed the lake, went part way up Atami-Tonga, 
whence is the best and the nearest view of the volcano, and 
then visited the most famous of the geysers, called O-gigoko 
(Big Hell). 

At this place the mountains seemed to be smouldering, as 
sulphur fumes and steam were issuing at many points, and the 
ground was covered with a friable white alkaline substance. In 
many a hollow the water was bubbling, with clouds of vapor 
and sulphureted hydrogen ; the soil was hot, and evidently un- 
derlaid by active fires. It was not safe to go very near, as the 
crust was thin and crumbling. The water running down the 
hills had a refreshing sound and a tempting clearness, but the 
thirsty tongue at once detected it to be a very strong solution 
of alum. The whole aspect of the place was infernal, and nat- 
urally suggested its name. While we were there an Englishman 
ventured too far from the beaten track, broke through the crust, 
and severely scalded both his feet. Had he been alone he 
would undoubtedly have perished. It is difficult to get a firm 
foot-hold, on account of the greasy, slippery character of the 
clayey paths, and these, with the rolling stones of the steep 
declivities, make the descent very fatiguing, and at times posi- 
tively dangerous. 

Fujiyama is almost a perfect cone, with a truncated top in 
which is the crater. It is, however, less steep than Mayon. Its 
upper part is comparatively steep, even to thirty-five degrees, 
but below this portion the inclination gradually lessens, till its 
elegant outlines are lost in the plain from which it rises. The 
curves of the sides depend partly on the nature, size and shape 



128 JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

of the ejected materials, the fine uniform ones remaining on 
comparatively steep slopes, while the larger and rounder come 
to rest farther down, and on the inclination that afterward be- 
comes curved from the subsidence of the central mass. 

It is in place here to detail an exploit of our Italian fellow 
traveller, which I took from his own mouth, and which has 
never before appeared in print. This was his ascent of Fuji- 
yama in winter — the only time that this feat has been accom- 
plished, or even attempted. It took place in November, 1877. 
He took the usual route by Hakone and Atami. Ordinarily he 
travels alone, but here he was compelled to take two guides, one 
of whom had charge of the station nearest the top. During 
certain seasons of the year the people make pilgrimages around 
the base of the summit cone, and occasionally to the rude Bud- 
dhist temple at the highest point, constructed of rude blocks of 
lava. When he reached the snow line he found that his guides 
intended to deceive him, and to take him in a circle around the 
snow. Accordingly, early in the morning he aroused them, and 
stated his purpose to go up the mountain ; they were unwilling 
to attempt this, but finally consented, with the intention of lead- 
ing him astray. The station-keeper, too, did not wish to lose 
the gain, if he went over the top and down on the other side as 
he proposed to do. So my Italian friend went on alone, think- 
ing his guides might follow, as he had spiked shoes and two 
strong iron-shod staffs, for ice climbing. 

It had snowed heavily during the night, and it was very cold. 
The guides, seeing their patron several hundred feet above the 
snow line, could not respond to his beckonings, as they had no 
ice-shoes. They had with them all his provisions and his wraps,, 
but in no wise daunted, as he was accustomed to such desertions, 



JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. i 2 g 

and perfectly self-reliant, he kept on alone up the very steep 
incline. The snow had now changed to ice ; climbing was very 
difficult, and a loss of foot-hold would have been fatal. Toward 
night he reached the summit, cold, hungry and exhausted ; as a 
strong wind was blowing he entered the temple for shelter, and 
ate of the cooked rice left on the altar ; there was also a small 
quantity of uncooked rice. He found some barrels of various 
sizes, placed there for containing the rice and other food of 
summer pilgrims. Into one of these he crawled, and managed 
to draw another one over it, and in that way, without any extra 
clothing, passed a miserable night. 

The next day and night he spent in the crater, to get shelter 
from the wind, which swept away the stones on the top with 
the violence of a typhoon. His food consisted wholly of raw 
rice. The next day the gale abated, but now his rice was gone, 
and it became necessary to descend at all hazards. He began 
his descent of the cone by thrusting his two staffs, one after the 
other, firmly into the ice, and then planting his foot against 
them. After a short progress in this slow way, one staff broke 
in two, and he saw the fragments rolling over and over down 
the icy precipice, emblematic, he thought, of his own fate. Sup- 
ported by one staff he looked around, and espied near him a 
flat piece of lava projecting from the ice. Carefully working his 
way to this, he sat down to rest ; but he soon became chilled, 
and knew that he must start again or perish from cold. 

As he was about to move he detected his guides far below, 
making signs for him to come on. They had probably seen 
the falling pieces of his staff, and were thus directed to him. 
They gradually drew within hailing distance, but, on account 
of the ice, they could not reach him to give him food and assist- 



130 JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

ance. At last, with the energy and strength of despair, he 
stood erect upon the rock, and began to descend, fearlessly, 
almost carelessly, and soon, without accident, stood by their 
side. After taking food, and being thoroughly rubbed, fasten- 
ing himself between them, he managed to reach a place of 
safety. 

He had been lost in the Sierra Nevada; he had been almost 
drowned in a rocky cavern in the mountains of the Hawaiian 
Islands ; he had run for his life from the infuriated Maoris 
after his ascent of their sacred and forbidden mountain of Ton- 
garia in New Zealand; he had experienced the dangers of the 
jungles of the Fijis, and the wilds of Australia, but never, be- 
fore or since, so he declared, had he come so near to ending his 
eventful life, as on the ice-clad peak of Fujiyama. Though suf- 
fering from rheumatism, from his varied hardships and ex- 
posure, he had made a journey of many thousand miles to try 
his strength on the fiery cone of Mayon. In this, as has been 
stated, he was doomed to disappointment. 

The island of Java is highly volcanic, and is situated over the 
great fissure in the earth's crust, on which Japan, the Philip- 
pines and New Zealand are also located. A chain of mount- 
ains runs along the centre, some of whose peaks are over 
twelve thousand feet high, and among them are forty volcanoes, 
about half of which are always active. 

In one of these, the Tenger, eight thousand feet high, the 
crater, which is one thousand feet below the summit, is second 
in size only to Kilauea. In the south range of the Kandang, 
Papandayang threw out in 1772, in one night, ashes and scoriae 
fifty feet thick over an area of twenty square miles, overwhelm- 
ing many villages, with much loss of life. In 1822 Galungong, 



JAPAN, J A VA AND NE W ZEALAND. i 3 r 

a few miles distant, destroyed everything in an area of sixty 
miles. 

One of the most disastrous eruptions on record began on 
the island of Krakatoa, in the Strait of Sunda, twenty-five 
miles west of Batavia, on the night of August 25, 1883. This 
island is nearly in the middle of the north part of the passage 
between Java and Sumatra ; an important commercial highway 
seventy miles long and sixty to one hundred and thirty wide. 
The island itself was about seven miles by five. Among the 
many eruptions of Krakatoa, this of 1883 is by far the worst. 
It was, in fact, unparalleled in the history of modern catastro- 
phes. Beginning on the twenty-fifth of August, in Krakatoa, it 
had on the twenty-sixth overwhelmed Anjer and other places 
by an immense wave, extending far along the coast. It does 
not appear that the Javan craters took on any extraordinary 
activity. 

It is impossible to separate, in this case, the destruction from 
the volcano and the earthquake, for both were of terrific and 
simultaneous force, and the loss of human life has been esti- 
mated at one hundred thousand. Krakatoa was practically rent 
in pieces, and its northern part disappeared beneath the water, 
while sixteen new craters apparently rose in its place. It 
altered the whole physical geography of the region, and so 
changed the rocks, shoals, and coasts, and the contour of the 
ocean's bottom, that new charts of soundings are necessary 
for safe navigation. In the issue of "Nature" for July 17, 
1884, it is stated that the explosions were heard at a distance of 
two hundred miles. 

At first there was apparently ejected a whitish acid, and sul- 
phurous mud, with no accompanying lava. Explosions followed 



132 JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

each other in rapid succession, accompanied by showers of 
cinders and huge fragments of rock, which were hurled high in 
air, and scattered far and wide. Enormous waves rushed upon 
the shores, causing much destruction of life and property. It 
increased in violence all day of the twenty-sixth, and at night 
was at its height. Such masses of ashes and fine dust were sent 
into the upper atmosphere, that to the latter were attributed by 
many physicists the remarkable sun glows at night and morning 
all over the world. 

The outburst gradually calmed down on the twenty-eighth, 
when Krakatoa was seen to be destroyed in its northern por- 
tion. The new volcanoes said to have arisen in its neighbor- 
hood were simply huge masses of hot rock and pumice, emitting 
steam from the contact of the water. The lost peaks are to be 
found at the bottom of the sea, principally a few miles to the 
north. The navigation in the Straits was far less interfered 
with than was expected. There is no doubt that lava was 
formed, but none appeared ; for such was the force of the ex- 
plosions that every thing was blown out of the crater in larger 
or smaller pieces, and pumice ; but mostly in a fine powder. 
Immense volumes of heated gases, some of them inflammable, 
were also discharged. 

The volcano had been moderately active for at least three 
months before the great outburst. There had been many erup- 
tions of mud and stones, some of the latter rounded by the 
volcanic friction ; a phenomenon common in Java. There can 
be little doubt that the exciting cause was a subsidence in the 
Straits, letting in the water to the highly heated strata in the 
neighborhood of the volcanic fissure which there exists, and the 
consequent sudden disengagement of superheated steam. 



JAP AX, JAVA AXD NEW ZEALAXD. 133 

Active volcanoes are now found only in the north island of 
the New Zealand group, where Tongaria attains a height of six 
thousand five hundred feet, and Egmont eight thousand two 
hundred and seventy. The latter is a perfect cone, and is always 
topped with snow. There are many others, singly and in chains. 
There are also great numbers of mud volcanoes, hot springs 
and srevsers. It is for the last that the island is the best 
known. Their waters are at or near the boiling point, and 
contain as much silica as do those in Iceland and elsewhere. 

The water of Lake Rotomahana, in the region of Tarawera, 
covering some one hundred and twentv acres, was surrounded 
by springs and fissures, which gave out steam, sulphurous gases, 
mud ejections, etc. In a rock at the northern end, about eighty 
feet high, was a crater-like excavation, open towards the lake, 
eighty by sixty feet, filled with a clear water which, from its 
white enamelled sides, had a blue tint ; this was always in a 
state of ebullition. The silicious incrustations left by the over- 
flow had made a series of terraces, two to six feet high, seem- 
ingly hewn from white or pink marble, each of the basins 
containing a similar azure water. These terraces covered an 
area of about three acres, and looked like a series of cataracts 
changed into stone, each edge being fringed with a festoon of 
delicate stalactites. The water contains about eighty-five per 
cent of silica, with one to two per cent of iron, alumina, and a 
little alkali. 

On June 9, 1SS6, a great volcanic disturbance began in the 
Auckland Lake region by a tremendous earthquake, followed 
during the night by many others. At seven the next morning 
a lead-colored cloud of pumice sand, advancing from the south, 
burst, and discharged showers of fine dust. The range of Mt. 



I 3 4 JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. 

Tarawera seemed to be in full volcanic activity, including some- 
craters supposed to be extinct, and embracing an area of one 
hundred and twenty miles by twenty. The showers of dust 
were so thick as to turn day into night for nearly two days. 
Some lives were lost, and several villages destroyed, being cov- 
ered ten feet deep with ashes, dust and a clayey mud. The vol- 
canic phenomena were of the most violent character, and the 
whole island appears to have been more or less convulsed. Mt 
Tarawera is said to be five hundred feet higher than before the 
eruption ; glowing masses were thrown up into the air, and 
tongues of fiery hue, gases or illuminated vapors, five hundred 
feet wide, towered up one thousand feet high. The mountain 
was two thousand seven hundred feet in height. 

This eruption presented a spectacle of rarely-equalled grand- 
eur. To travellers and strangers the greatest resultant loss will 
be the destruction of those world-renowned curiosities ; the white 
and pink terraces, in the vicinity of Lake Rotomahana and the 
region of the famous geysers. The natives have a superstition 
that the eruption of the extinct Tarawera is caused by the pro- 
fanation of foreign footsteps. It is to them a sacred place, and 
its crater a repository for their dead. It was in this part that 
the first earthquake occurred. One side of the mountain fell 
in, and then began the eruption. The basin of the lake was 
broken up, and disappeared, but again reappeared as a boiling 
mud cauldron ; craters burst out in various places, and the beau- 
tiful white terrace was no more. After the first day the violence 
gradually diminished, and in a week had ceased. Very possibly 
another lake will be formed, and in time other terraces ; but it 
is hardly within the range of probability that the beauty of the 
lost terraces will ever be paralleled. 



JAPAN, JAVA AND NEW ZEALAND. j?$ 

In this eruption, as usual, we find the earthquake preceding 
the volcanic outburst. New Zealand, like the Philippines, Java 
and the Hawaiian Islands, is situated over a great earth-fissure 
or line of weakness. Subsidence or dislocation from tensile 
strain of the crust took place, and the influx of water to new 
sources of heated strata developed the explosive force. The 
earthquake and the volcano worked together here, as they fre- 
quently do, unfortunately in this case destroying one of the 
most beautiful scenes on the surface of our globe. 

Mr. Geikie, in an article in /'Nature" for August 5, 1886, 
likens this to the great eruption of Vesuvius in a. d. 79, which 
destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. In both instances a 
mountain which was not recognized as an active volcano sud- 
denly burst out with terrific violence, filling the air with ashes, 
stones, scoriae and mud. At each locality there were the pre- 
monitory earthquakes, the thick dark cloud of volcanic origin 
hanging over the mountain, the descent of dust, sand and hot 
stones, the discharge of mud, with, so far as known, no lava 
streams, and the overwhelming of an inhabited district under a 
deep covering of loose volcanic materials. Full accounts of the 
catastrophe, and the structure and breaking up of the terraces, 
may be found in the same journal for July, 1886. 

We note, therefore, similar phenomena in the Hawaiian and 
Philippine Islands, Iceland, Java, New Zealand and the Medi- 
terranean basin. We may now properly inquire what is the 
cause and nature of volcanic action, and what is its relation to 
the earthquake. 



CHAPTER X. 

NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 

Four principal theories. — Secular cooling of the globe. — Consequent stress from contrac* 
tion. — Mountain chains and dislocations. — Mallet's theory of a cooling, shrinking crust 
on a hot centre. — Transformation of motion into heat. — Lines of weakness. — Occluded 
gases. — Agency of steam. — Linear arrangement of volcanoes. — Number of volcanoes 
on the globe. — Production of fissures. — Barometric changes. — The potentially liquid', 
condition. — Conclusions. 

THE scope of this work will not permit any detailed state- 
ment of those various theories of the causes of volcanoes 
which have now lost the confidence of geologists. 

The four principal ones, now adhered to or opposed by lead- 
ing scientists, are : — 

I. That the earth's crust is very thin, and that its fiery centre 
is discharged through volcanoes communicating therewith. Very 
few geologists now hold to this belief. Since the researches of 
Sir William Thompson, it has been generally accepted among 
scientific men that the earth as a whole is more rigid than glass,, 
and probably as rigid as steel ; the centre may be hot, but not 
fluid, and volcanic phenomena can not be explained thereby. 

It may be said, however, that Prof. Newberry, of New York,, 
has recently published his dissent from the dictum of Sir 
William Thompson, maintaining that his conclusions are based 
on insufficient data, and opposed to some of the first principles, 



of geological science. 



136 



NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION 



137 



II. The theory of chemical action, advocated by Sir Humphry 
Davy, and explained by the oxidation of inflammable materials 
in contact with water, has now no champions. Chemical action 
in most cases would absorb, rather than disengage heat, and it is 
most likely that the chemical energies of such substances were 
almost wholly exhausted before the consolidation of the earth's 
surface. 

III. Isolated lakes of molten matter within the crust can 
hardly be supposed, without admitting central fluidity (even a 
fiery Mediterranean in a shell one hundred miles thick), nor can 
their maintenance under, great volcanic centres be explained. 

IV. Before explaining Vose and Mallet's theory, which main- 
tains that the earth, if not quite solid at the centre, is so nearly 
so that all igneous phenomena may have their origin within its 
crust, it may be well to state the views of Constant Prevost and 
Joseph LeConte on the formation of the great features of its 
surface. 

The fundamental statement made by these thinkers is that 
the crust of our globe is cooling at a different rate from the 
deeper seated portions; that the strata with the best conductive 
power would be first cooled and form the ocean bottoms, while 
those of slower conductivity would form, from the accident of 
their composition, the continents. At the present time the sur- 
face being comparatively cool, and the interior cooling and con- 
tracting more rapidly, there is a tremendous horizontal pressure 
or stress in the crust, which must yield somewhere, and this 
yielding is generally marked by the lines of the mountain chains. 
There is, also, a crushing together horizontally, with foldings of 
the strata, like plastic materials, and a thickening of the whole 
up-swelled mass. This crushing, with dislocation upward or 



138 NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 

downward, is, from the secular contraction of the interior of the 
earth, constantly going on, on an immense scale. A sudden 
disruption may cause an earthquake, and the volcanic outburst. 

Mallet's theory, now generally accepted, is, that in cooling 
from a nebulous mass the crust of the earth has shrunk upon 
the centre, and this all the more readily according to its thin- 
ness. The most of this shrinking has, therefore, gone on in 
former geological ages. This shrinking, crushing, dislocation, 
and subsidence of strata of very great extent and thickness, by 
the friction of motion develop such an amount of heat as to 
melt rocks and the sedimentary deposits between the crust and 
the nucleus, and these, by the agency of steam from admitted 
waters, are brought to the surface in the form of lavas and other 
volcanic products. The action of the heat is probably aided by 
that of highly heated and alkaline waters, which soften and 
liquefy the most refractory rocks. 

According to Prof. T. S terry Hunt, this transformation of 
motion into heat occurs in the fluid sedimentary deposits, at 
various depths, between the cooling crust and the hot but solid 
nucleus. This heat would not only soften and chemically 
change the lower part of these sediments, but the underlying 
floor of the older crystalline rocks ; thus establishing a line of 
weakness, or of least resistance, in the crust coincident with 
that of the great accumulations of sediment. From this it would 
result that the wrinkling, or corrugation due to a contracting 
nucleus, would be determined along the lines of great sedimen- 
tation. 

This shrinking and falling in of strata originally took place 
along great lines of fracture such as now mark the steep sides 
of an existing continent (the west coast of America, for ex- 



NA1URE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION 



l 39 



ample) ; or in the direction of a sunken one, as in those of the 
Atlantic and Pacific. This latter is by many supposed to be 
indicated by a chain of volcanic islands from Jan Meyen to 
Teneriffe and St. Helena. Volcanic disturbances and cooling: 
contractions and subsidence have been, I believe, the chief 
agents in producing the beds of the oceans and the connect- 
ing Mediterranean, Caribbean, Red, and Black seas ; in the 
straits of Magellan, Gibraltar, Malacca, Sunda, Florida, Behring, 
Torres, Bass, and Cook ; in the British, St. George's, and 
Mozambique channels ; in the great lakes, like the Caspian, the 
Dead Sea, Superior and its connections; in the smaller lakes, 
the world over, and the great water courses ; in the bay of 
Naples, the harbors of Panama, San Francisco, Rio Janeiro, 
Acapulco, and many others. That similar causes have pro- 
duced both the elevations and depressions on the earth's sur- 
face, may also be inferred from the fact that the height of the 
loftiest mountains and the depth of the deepest ocean are about 
alike. 

Certain liquids and solids have a remarkable power of absorb- 
ing many times their volume of gases, called " occluded," which 
may be given off explosively, on a relief of pressure from any 
cause ; such a cause, for instance, as condensation, without 
chemical action. This may explain many phenomena of vol- 
canic action, and may be excited to activity by subsidence. 

The presence of water at great depths in the earth will be 
easily understood, when we remember that water containing 
gases in solution is constantly finding its way deeply into the 
crust. As three fourths of the globe is covered by the sea, 
whose average depth is two miles, and exerting a pressure of 
two to three tons to the square inch of ocean bottom, large 



140 



NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 



quantities must find their way down, forming reservoirs, or 
undergoing absorption by heated materials. This is a prolific 
source of the steam which is the active agent in volcanoes. As 
would be expected from subsidence depending on this immense 
water pressure, we find twice as many volcanoes in oceanic 
islands and near continental borders, as in the midst of the 
central land masses. The great linear bands of oceanic vol- 
canoes, one ten thousand miles long, and another eight thou- 
sand, with respectively one hundred and fifty and more than 
one hundred active vents, could only have been formed along a 
long fissure from subsidence or shrinkage by refrigeration and 
pressure along these lines of weakness. Explosive action of a 
power to produce this would have torn our planet to pieces, 
and must- have been secondary ; a consequence and not a 
cause of fissure. 

The thought naturally arises whether a planet once existing 
between Mars and Jupiter, and now represented only by frag- 
ment asteroids, may not have been broken in pieces by an 
explosive action of this kind. 

The lines are sinuous, but continuous, in a general northerly 
and southerly direction. The exceptionally situated volcanoes 
of Central Asia and the Hawaiian Islands, find a better expla- 
nation in the subsidence caused by the pressure of the largest 
land mass and the deepest ocean, than in a primary explosion 
or uplift. The same cause would fix the position of the coast 
lines, to which mountain chains and volcanoes are parallel and 
near. 

It may be interesting to note that the deep-sea soundings of 
the " Tuscarora" and "Challenger" show that the deepest holes 
in the ocean floor, four thousand to four thousand six hundred 



NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION 14 r 

fathoms, are in volcanic areas. In other words, they are found 
where the immense pressure would produce subsidence, which 
has occurred not only parallel to but between continents ; 
as the West Indian between North and South America, the 
Mediterranean between Europe and Africa, the Red Sea be- 
tween Asia and Africa, the Javan and Philippine between Asia 
and Australia — and, for the same reason, a pressure of land 
masses on weak spots in deep waters. 

According to Prof. Judd, the first step towards the exhibition 
of volcanic action must be the production of an opening in the 
earth's crust. The almost universal occurrence of the heated 
stratum above referred to, between the crust and the centre, 
would explain, better than a fiery nucleus, the rise of one 
degree Fahrenheit for every fifty to sixty feet of descent ; but 
this would vary according to the conducting power of the rocks 
and the depth of the heated stratum. 

There are three hundred to three hundred and fifty great 
volcanoes on the globe. Including extinct ones, ancient and 
modern, there are about one thousand. There are tens of 
thousands smaller volcanoes, and millions of stufas, geysers, 
hot springs, fumaroles, mud ejections, and the like. These 
last may make up in number what they lack in individual 
energy, and may be quite as useful as the larger ones in 
relieving the imprisoned dying volcanic forces. The greatest 
number of the principal volcanoes (about one hundred and 
seventeen) in North, Central and South America, are on the 
continents, and twice as many in the oceanic islands. At an 
early geological period the whole line of the present Atlantic 
was probably traversed by a chain of volcanoes on the grandest 
scale ; but at present only a few parts of this range are above 



142 



NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 



the sea, forming the isolated islands and groups now seen. 
From the pressure of the ocean — a ton on every square inch 
of bottom, for each one thousand fathoms of water — it does 
not seem possible that volcanic cones could be built up from 
the bottom of a deep sea and reach the surface ; but quiet 
outwellings might in many cases occur from fissures in the 
ocean beds. 

The periodical activity of volcanoes, their violent paroxysms 
and seasons of rest, sometimes for centuries, seem natural on 
the theory of subsidence and fissure, according as it is sudden 
and great, or slow and slight, letting in water, and thus exciting 
and perpetuating steam action along lines of weakness. Ex- 
plosive force seems inadequate to account for them. The 
shifting of the axis of eruption, as in Etna, and the linear 
arrangement all the world over, indicate subsidence as the 
primary cause, and eruption as a secondary effect. 

As Prof. Judd states, Mr. Scrope long ago pointed out that 
the ordinary argument for the explanation of volcanic out- 
bursts is simply " reasoning in a circle." It is assumed, on the 
one hand, that the fissures are produced by steam and other 
forces set free by the passage of sea water to interior heated 
masses ; and, on the other, that the production of these fissures 
leads to the influx of water. If the passage of water by the 
fissures produces the eruptions, what has caused the fissures ? 
If the subterranean forces can produce the fissures, why not the 
eruptions also ? It would seem, then, that only subsidence or 
fracture, as above explained, can resolve the difficulty. 

Changes of two inches in barometric pressure within a brief 
period are not uncommon. A fall to this extent indicates the 
removal of a weight of about two million tons from each square 



NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 143 

mile of the surface of the earth implicated. This relief of 
pressure is enough to cause the flashing into steam of the 
superheated water, or escape of explosive gases, which we have 
good reason to believe exist in volcanic areas. Such a relief 
of pressure, whether from terrestrial movements or atmospheric 
changes, may be better appreciated by an allusion to what has 
been called the " potentially liquid condition." 

The boiling point of liquids, and the fusing point of solids, 
are very much raised by great pressure, so that water may 
remain liquid at a temperature far above two hundred and 
twelve degrees Fahrenheit in the depths of the earth, while 
masses of rock may be in a solid state at a temperature far 
above that at which they would melt at the surface. They are 
then said to be in a " potentially liquid condition." Upon the 
relief of this pressure, the water would flash into explosive 
steam, and the rock assume the liquid or lava state. This 
would explain how by a fissure the ejecting force and the 
ejected material of a volcano might arise, with or without an 
earthquake. 

This chapter may be closed with the four following con- 
elusions, deduced from Prof. Judd's researches and an examina- 
tion of volcanic records, ancient and modern : 

I. A long period of quiescence is generally followed by an 
eruption, either long or violent. 

II. A long-continued or very violent eruption is usually fol- 
lowed by a prolonged period of repose. 

III. Feeble and short eruptions ordinarily succeed one 
another at brief intervals. 

IV. The violence of a great eruption is generally inversely 
proportional to its duration. 



j 44 NATURE AND CAUSE OF VOLCANIC ACTION. 

In a single sentence, then, it may be stated, as deduced from 
the history of volcanic phenomena, specimens of which have 
been here detailed from personal experience, that such phe- 
nomena are due to one simple cause, viz : the escape of im- 
prisoned steam from masses of molten matters in the crust of 
the earth. That this is occasioned by the water from the 
surface of the land, or from the seas, gaining access to the sedi- 
mentary strata between the crust and the centre, and becoming 
heated by the crushing movements, uplifts, depressions, and 
fractures, consequent on the secular cooling of our globe. And 
that this occurs whether we consider an eruption of the majestic 
Etna or the humblest bubbling hot spring. The same grand 
law, with innumerable modifications, builds, adapts for life, and 
finally destroys a world. 



CHAPTER XI. 

EARTHQUAKES. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

Most common in volcanic regions. — May occur in non-volcanic districts. — In Asia Minor, 
England, Atlantic coast of Africa, New England, California, Spain, and the Mississippi 
Valley. — Theories. — Dr. Young in 1807. — Mallet in 1846. — A wave of elastic com- 
pression. — Velocity of transit. — Different movements. — Origin. — Marine earthquakes. 

ALTHOUGH there is no necessary connection between the 
volcano and the earthquake, other than that both are 
the effects of one o-reat cause — the secular cooling of the 
globe — it is true that the latter is most likely to occur in vol- 
canic regions. Such regions are along the west coast of North 
and South America, Iceland, the Azores, the Mediterranean, 
and the Hawaiian, Philippine and Javan Archipelagoes. 

They have, on the other hand, in memorable instances, 
occurred in districts far removed from existing or extinct vol- 
canoes ; as in the Mississippi and St. Lawrence valleys, New 
England, the Atlantic seaboard, Portugal and Spain, Asia 
Minor, and the Himalayas. In November, 1881, there were 
twenty-nine shocks, in seventeen out of thirty days, in different 
parts of Switzerland, in regions now non-volcanic. 

It may be well to cite a few instances in confirmation of the 
fact that earthquakes are independent of volcanoes, and to show 
that they are generally, or at all events on land, due to that 
rupture of strata, upward or downward, consequent on the hori- 

14s 



1 46 EAR THQ UAKES. — GENERAL CONSIDER A TIONS. 

zontal thrusts or tangential pressures, to which Constant Prevost, 
in France, was among the first to draw attention. 

On the third of April, 1881, the air on the island of Scio, off 
the coast of Asia Minor, was heavy, though the thermometer 
marked only sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. There was a 
southerly wind, a cloudy sky, and pale lightnings on the horizon. 
Suddenly, at a few minutes before two p. m., and without any 
previous trembling or subterranean noises, a fearful cracking 
was heard, and a violent shock shook the island. The ground 
trembled, and moved in every direction ; nearly all the buildings 
were at once crumbled down, and thousands of persons were 
killed and buried in the ruins. Great fissures opened in the 
earth, which engulfed scores of persons at a time. Tremblings 
succeeded each other at irregular intervals, becoming less fre- 
quent and violent till toward night. On the eleventh of April, 
at seven p. m., a second shock, accompanied by a loud report, 
shook the ground. The whole region from Scio to Cape Mastic 
suffered greatly; the fields all about the city were fissured 
irregularly, and in some places elevations were leveled or 
depressed. This was evidently a local subsidence, without vol- 
canic disturbance, in a granitic and limestone region. The 
tremblings continued for several days, or until the dislocated 
strata had settled to a state of rest. 

On the twelfth of April, 1884, at 9.30 a. m., there was a se- 
vere shock in the southeast counties of England, over a line 
seventy miles from north to south, from the Thames to Bury 
St. Edmunds, and from twenty to fifty miles from the sea. It 
lasted but thirty seconds. The greatest violence was about 
midway on this line. As this region is a thousand miles from 
the Atlantic volcanic centre, or from any earthquake locality, 



EAR THQ UAKES. — GENERAL CONSIDER A TIONS. j 4 7 

and as there was no news of a violent disturbance at a distance, 
the most natural explanation is that it was from a local rupture 
at the south and west, where, in the districts of the Malvern and 
Mendip Hills, the strata are very much "faulted." The lime- 
stone is rich in hot springs, whose corroding waters probably 
undermined the deep layers, and thus contributed to local 
subterranean changes, the shock of which was communicated 
in the direction rendered most conductive by structure and 
other characters; and this, whether the original movements 
were due to geological, physical, electric, atmospheric, or other 
causes. 

On the tenth of August, 1884, a shock was felt along the 
Atlantic coast of America from Virginia to Maine, evidently 
from disturbance in the non-volcanic Appalachian region. It 
lasted about ten seconds, and did but little harm. This was 
probably the preparatory forerunner of the earthquake at 
Charleston, S. C, in 1886. 

In November and December, 1884, several shocks were felt 
throughout Southern and Central New Hampshire. Just after 
midnight of November 23, one occurred, the movements lasting 
about sixteen seconds, waking people up, smashing crockery, 
and extending through Keene, Peterborough, Contoocook, Man- 
chester and Concord. The direction was apparently northeast 
to southwest. Slighter shocks were felt ten days before. In 
Laconia, December 17, was experienced the heaviest shock 
ever known in that region; at Centre Harbor it lasted half a 
minute. The direction was from north to south. It is stated 
that it was preceded by a loud report, like a clap of thunder, 
which was followed for some seconds by a heavy rumbling 
sound. Similar accounts were published in various parts of 



j 4 8 EAR THQ UAKES. — GENERAL CONSIDER A TIONS. 

this country and Europe, in districts far removed from any vol- 
canic centres, ancient or modern. 

In December, 1885, San Francisco, often visited by the earth- 
quake, though now far from any volcanic activity, had an ex- 
perience of six seconds, which made all the old buildings creak, 
and all movables rattle. 

From Christmas, 1884, to the early part of January, 1885, a 
series of earthquake shocks occurred, extending over a large 
part of Southern Spain, but especially destructive of life and 
property in Granada and Andalusia. Loud rumblings were 
heard, the ground was cleft, and men, animals and houses fell 
into the abyss. Its course was in some places from west to east, 
in others from south to north, according to the strata involved. 
The longest shock lasted fifty seconds. In some places there 
were three, in others, at a little distance, seventeen shocks; 
pointing distinctly to rupture and shock till the dislocated strata 
attained rest. There was, no doubt, great electrical disturb- 
ance, from the immense friction attending the depression, as 
was shown by the flashes of lightning from a clear sky. 

There is little need of adducing any more instances, although 
hundreds could be given, to show that earthquakes occur, the 
world over, in regions not now volcanic, and in some, like rock- 
ribbed New England, where there are no traces of volcanic 
acth^ty in the present geological epoch. 

The theories brought forward to account for earthquakes are 
numerous and fanciful in the extreme. No satisfactory connec- 
tion with atmospheric conditions has been proved, except as 
these are an accessory, and possible exciting cause. They occur 
everywhere : at all seasons of the year, at all times of day, and in 
all geological formations and epochs ; they seem to follow no 



EARTHQ UAKES. — GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 1 49 

laws of periodicity, and, in mmy remarkable instances, are in- 
dependent of volcanoes. Attempts have been made to connect 
their phenomena with the solar spots, terrestrial magnetism, 
the phases of the moon, and the tides, but without satisfactory 
results. 

Prof. Guyot states that there can be no doubt that within the 
tropics, at least, earthquakes are most common at times of 
greatest atmospheric disturbance, but a precise relation between 
the two classes of phenomena has never been established. 

Mallet is of opinion, from studying the data of eighteen and 
one half centuries, that they are the least frequent before the 
autumnal equinox, while others regard the solstices and equi- 
noxes as all-critical periods. Where the doctors so disagree, it 
is a great satisfaction to be able, as far as present knowledge 
goes, to refer the earthquake as well as the volcano, to a simple 
dynamic force depending on the secular cooling of the globe. 
The cause is the same in all, while the effects vary according 
to geological and wholly terrestrial circumstances. 

Dr. Thomas Young, in 1807, seems to have been the first 
who suggested the nature of the earthquake shock, as afterward 
elaborated by Mallet in 1846. This theory is now generally 
received ; viz : that the motion of the earth at any point is a 
vibratory one, and is propagated like a wave of sound. Accord- 
ing to Mallet, an earthquake is the passage of a wave of elastic 
compression, shock or pulse, by an observer, in any direction or 
from any centre, in which each particle of the earth vibrates 
forward and backward, in nearly a straight line, in a curve more 
or less complicated according to superficial or deep obstructing 
causes. The direction may be anywhere between vertical and 
horizontal, through the crust or along the surface, with or 



150 EARTHQUAKES.— GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

without sound and ocean waves. This vibratory movement 
implies a motion forward and backward, in an elliptical or other 
curve ; the greatest destruction is usually during the forward 
movement, when the upward velocity is at its maximum ; the 
downward motion accompanies the return pulse-movement, and 
is slower and less dangerous. These pulsations may be in 
curved lines, but not in circles. The throwing down of build- 
ings and walls, he thinks, is due to the velocity of the motion of 
the particles in the small elliptical orbit, and not to that with 
which the shock passes over the earth. This velocity varies 
with the elasticity and density of the rocks and soils in its path. 
We find the phenomena of reflection, refraction, and interfer- 
ence, according to the strata involved, just as in the case of 
sound. 

The velocity of transit of the wave in the Naples earthquake 
of 1857 M. Mallet determined as at one thousand to six hun- 
dred and fifty feet per second. In some instances a velocity 
more than double this has been noticed. The velocity of each 
particle in its small orbit is, on an average, only twelve feet per 
second; so that the rapidity of transit is very much greater 
than that of the shock which causes the destruction ; Mallet 
estimates the amount of the shock, during that earthquake, 
as such as would be received by an obstacle run into by a 
locomotive moving ten miles an hour. 

The vertical movements are much more destructive than the 
horizontal, and are readily distinguished ; in fact the Spanish, 
in the Philippines, apply the word terremoto, earthquake, only 
to the former, and call the latter temblor or trembling. 

In the " Philosophical Magazine," 1881-82, speaking of the 
earthquakes of Japan, Milne and Gray assert that a point on 



EAR THQ UAKES. — GENERAL CONSIDER A TIONS. j 5 l 

the earth's surface may not move uniformly forward and back- 
ward during the whole of the shock, even though it emanate 
from one point, which is more likely to pass through a series of 
complicated curves, as they may be very irregular, both in 
magnitude and course, in the same earthquake. In fact the 
problem is a very complex one, and observers have called to 
their aid an automatic instrument of registration, the seismo- 
graph or seismometer; these vary from simple plates strewn 
with sand, tide gauges, barometers, and pendulums to compli- 
cated arrangements of vertical springs, mercurial tubes, and 
electric and magnetic apparatus, which cannot be described 
here ; probably the most complete seismic apparatus in the 
world is at the Palmieri Observatory on Vesuvius. 

The notions as to the origin of earthquakes have been as 
diverse as those concerning the nature of the shock. Explo- 
sions of gas and sulphurous compounds, electrical discharges, 
falling in of caverns, the flashing of water into steam, have in 
turn been accepted and discarded. There can be no question 
that the sudden expansion of steam under high pressure may 
often cause a local shock, but we speak here only of widely 
extended disturbances, which at present are generally explained 
on Mallet's theory. 

Many, perhaps most, recorded violent earthquakes begin in 
the ocean bed, far from land, and where the weight of water 
above is greatest. These may be accompanied by huge waves 
destructive many thousand miles distant. The great earth- 
quake which destroyed Lisbon in 1755 probably originated 
under the ocean west of Portugal. 

We frequently read from the logs of mariners of severe and 
inexplicable commotions of the surface, producing immense 



I 52 EARTHQUAKES.— GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

waves. The following is such an account of a brig which suf- 
fered during a marine earthquake in latitude thirty-seven de- 
grees north and longitude seventy-five degrees, on the western 
edge of the Gulf Stream. It was the fifteenth of August, 1884. 
The sky denoted a hurricane, and the vessel was put under short 
sail. The wind veered to every point of the compass, and then 
lulled. Suddenly a roar of the sea was heard ; the ocean boiled 
like a pot, heaping up great waves which tossed the brig about 
like an egg-shell; now on the crest of a sea, and now in the 
trough, her foreyard crossing to the water on either side ; the 
vessel was seriously crippled. There was no wind at the time, 
and the seething and boiling of the water was like a cauldron. 
The convulsion must have had its centre four or five hundred 
miles east of Hatteras. Only a very small proportion of such 
occurrences ever come to the notice of the public or scientists ; 
the most of them are buried in the log-books of the mercantile 
marine, with whom the chief object is a safe and speedy voyage, 
without much observation of the perturbations of the water out- 
side of the limit of danger and loss. 



CHAPTER XII. 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

Theory of displacements. — Fracture from stress, contraction, or subsidence. — Faults. — May 
and do occur everywhere. — Elevations and foldings of the crust. — Instances of subsid- 
ence after earthquakes in many parts of the world. — A volcanic vent no safeguard 
against an earthquake. — Earthquakes in Iceland. — Volcanic fissures in the moon. — 
Charleston, S. C. — Other earthquake disturbances and subsidences. — Barometric changes 
as causes. / 



GOING back to Constant Prevost's researches on the 
physics of the globe, and to Mallet's theory, as hereto- 
fore given, attention may be called to a comprehensive and 
comprehensible statement on the " Cause of Earthquakes " in 
the " Forum " for December, 1886, by Maj. Powell, of the 
United States Geological Survey. His theory is essentially 
that which may be called Mallet's, though many before and 
after him have contributed to the now generally accepted views 
of geologists and physicists, that earthquakes are due to dis- 
placements or fractures of the crust of our globe, sometimes 
with elevation, and sometimes by subsidence, and sometimes by 
both. 

In other words, wherever and whenever, in the cooling 
shrinking crust of the earth fracture takes place, from stress or 
tangential thrust or crushing, or wherever and whenever 
support is taken away from overlying strata, by contraction, 
pressure, chemical action, emission of lavas, corroding and 

153 



I 5 4 FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

heated waters, occasional local explosions, aided, no doubt, by 
terrestrial, meteorological, and astronomical causes, said strata 
are broken, with upheaval or depression. These may be hun- 
dreds of miles in extent, and leagues in thickness, and, accord- 
ing to the violence of the rupture, produce a shock which may 
be transmitted to long distances by land or beneath the water, 
with a force and direction depending on the elastic characters 
of the strata. 

In old geological times, the dislocations, uplifts, and depres- 
sions of strata, called "faults," were much more common and 
extensive than now ; but, as the tension and pressure which 
formed the immense ancient foldings have in some measure 
been modified by the increased thickness of the crust, it seems 
natural that depression should be more marked than upheaval. 
The Jeddo [Japan] earthquake, in 1881, according to Mr. Milne 
(Report of British Association, at York, 1881), originated in a 
region which is very much faulted, with evidence of recent 
elevation. In countries where the strata have not been dis- 
turbed since their original horizontal deposition, as in many 
parts of Northern Europe, there is comparatively little oppor- 
tunity for violent upheaval or subsidence ; still the world-wide 
and enormous pressures, consequent on secular refrigeration 
and contraction, are constantly, though slowly, acting, folding 
very extended formations, with depression here and elevation 
there, till finally rupture must take place to restore the equilib- 
rium in the depths. These results are occurring in all lands, 
and, if in any degree sudden or violent, constitute an earth- 
quake. 

Major Powell gives considerable space to fractures or faults, 
with elevation or subsidence, which he speaks of as ranging 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 



155 



from a few feet to ten thousand feet in height, and from less 
than one mile to one thousand miles long. These displace- 
ments of strata deform or change the contour of the surface 
constantly in the past and the present, and certainly in the 
future. He places more stress on the elevations, and among 
others he cites Owen's Valley in 1872, of whose earthquake 
he finds a satisfactory explanation in a fault forty miles long, 
and five to twenty-five feet high. In this case there was 
probably both upheaval and depression. In Concepcion, 1835, 
there was four to five feet elevation, afterward settling to two. 
In the Sierra Nevada, on a line 6.vq hundred miles long, and 
fifty to seventy wide, there has been an uplift on the east side 
of twenty thousand feet, in a very irregular way, by hundreds of 
thousands of small displacements ; "a record, to those who can 
read geological evidence, of thousands, or rather millions of 
earthquakes." 

The same may be said of the faults and foldings of the 
Appalachians, with probably hundreds of thousands of earth- 
quakes, of which the one at Charleston, S. C, in August, 1886, 
was a noted example. Man has catalogued thousands of such 
convulsions, but he might as well try to make a list of rain 
falls ; what can come under his notice are utterly insignificant 
in point of numbers. 

The evidences of subsidence after earthquakes are more 
numerous and striking than those of upheaval, especially in vol- 
canic regions. This would be expected when we remember the 
amount of material taken from the interior of the crust, leaving 
cavities behind, which acts as a depressor by its accumulated 
weight. The eruption of Vesuvius in 1794 yielded forty-six 
million cubic feet of lava ; that of Etna, in 1669, twice as much, 




156 FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

and that of Skaptar Jokul, in Iceland, in two years, twenty-one 
cubic miles. 

In the earthquake which destroyed Lisbon, in November, 
1755, in which sixty thousand people perished, a part of the 
city was permanently engulfed in the bay to a depth of six 
hundred feet ; the shock was felt over an area six times that of 
France. To imagine this the result of the action of explosive 
gases or steam seems out of the question, for such violence 
would have torn Southern Europe to tatters. 

Port Royal, Jamaica, sunk beneath the sea in June, 1692. 
Near the mouth of the Indus, in 1829, two thousand square 
miles sunk. In 1779, Papandayang, one of the largest of the 
Javan volcanoes, fell in, and similar subsidences have since 
occurred. 

In August, 1883, the island of Krakatoa in great part dis- 
appeared. Tjeringen, with a population of ten thousand, and 
several other coast towns, entirely disappeared, buried beneath 
the waters. On the day after this outburst, the sea fell fifteen 
feet at Colombo, Ceylon, two thousand miles distant. In the 
catastrophe in Anatolia, October, 1883, many houses and people 
were swallowed by rents in the ground. 

In Book II. of L yell's Principles of Geology, are given many 
instances of volcanic subsidence ; among them are the follow- 
ing : In Quito, July, 1698, according to Humboldt, a great part 
of the crater and summit of the volcano Carguairazo fell in. 
Lyell says: " M. Boussingault declares his belief that if a full 
register had been kept of all the convulsions experienced here 
[Quito] and in other populous districts of the Andes, it would 
be found that the trembling of the earth had been incessant. 
The frequency of the movement, he thinks, is not due to 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 157 

volcanic explosions, but to the continual falling in of masses 
of rock, which have been fractured and upheaved in a solid 
form at a comparatively recent epoch." 

Other illustrations of subsidence are adduced in chapters 
twenty-eight to thirty-three of L yell's " Principles." In St. 
Domingo, November, 1 75 1, Port au Prince, and a part of the 
coast sixty miles long, sunk, and has ever since been a bay. 
In 1762, in Hindostan, sixty square miles of the Chittagong 
coast suddenly and permanently disappeared, and a mountain 
was also no longer to be seen. 

In 1783, in Calabria began a series of shocks, extending over 
four years, in a region where there are no volcanic rocks ; in 
Messina, Sicily, on the opposite side of the narrow straits, the 
shore was rent, the quay sank fourteen inches below the level 
of the water, the soil along the port inclined toward the sea, 
and houses were much fissured. There were long rents in 
Soriano, six to ten and one half feet deep, and many fissures in 
Polistena ; some very long and deep. In Terranuova, houses 
were uplifted or sank. Most of these chasms and fissures ran 
parallel to some pre-existing neighboring gorge ; some took 
various directions, like cracks in a broken pane of glass. In 
the vicinity of Oppido houses and stores were swallowed up, 
the sides of the chasms sometimes suddenly closing ; one 
chasm was five hundred feet long and two hundred deep. 
The rents did not occur in the more solid rocks, and in clayey 
strata sometimes were very short. No eruption occurred from 
either Etna or Stromboli during this Calabrian earthquake. 

In Sicily, near Terranuova, in 1790, the ground sank for a 
circuit of three Italian miles, in one place thirty feet, during 
seven shocks, probably connected with Etna. In 1790, accord- 



158 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 



ing to Humboldt, at Caraccas, a granitic soil covered with 
forest sank, leaving a lake eight hundred yards in diameter, and 
between two hundred and three hundred feet deep. In 1786, 
according to Horsfield, shocks were felt near Batur at intervals 
for four months, followed by an eruption ; rents were formed, 
tracts disappeared, and villages were swallowed up. In 1772 
Papandayang lost four thousand feet of its height, and an 
extent of ground on and around it, fifteen by six miles, was 
engulfed. Other great subsidences are given in the " Philoso- 
phical Transactions " for 1693-94. 

The phenomena attending the volcanic eruption of Mount 
Saint Augustine, Alaska, October 6, 1883, seem to confirm the 
theory of subsidence. A vertical rupture extended across it 
from east to west, the northern slope having sunk away to the 
level of the northern cliff. The cleft was wide enough for a 
vessel to sail through, had there been sufficient depth of water. 
The eruption was accompanied by a wave, twenty-five to thirty 
feet high, and others of eighteen to fifteen at intervals of about 
five minutes. 

At Krakatoa, Java, where once was its northern portion, 
bottom was not found at a depth of twelve hundred feet. The 
immense pressures of the depths of the earth and the super- 
incumbent ocean, may explain the opening of a fissure along 
the Javan line of weakness, and may also account for the 
consequent admission of water, and the escape of superheated 
steam. In the order of sequence, therefore, came, first, fracture 
and subsidence along the fissure in an already weakened vol- 
canic area, then the earthquake accompaniment, and then the 
volcanic outburst. 

In Nicaragua a great eruption of Momotombo occurred on 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 



159 



the twenty-second of May, 1886. It was accompanied by severe 
earthquake shocks, during which the whole area of Managua, 
the capital, with ten thousand inhabitants, sank three feet, com- 
pletely destroying all the most important buildings, and many 
lives. 

A volcanic vent, therefore, is no safeguard against an earth- 
quake, but rather a predisposing local cause, as it leads to the 
preparation of caverns which may be the theatre of subsidence. 
These may, however, in a few insignificant cases, mitigate 
accompanying explosive efforts. The destructive earthquakes 
that visited Manila in 1863 and 1880, took place in a region 
one hundred miles from any active volcano. They originated 
in a chain of mountains to the far northeast, and under a dis- 
trict where no volcanic disturbance has been known for cen- 
turies, but where very large cavities exist. The eruption of 
Vesuvius in a. d. 79, when its volcanic character had been for- 
gotten, was preceded by a severe earthquake eleven years 
before. This was not a case of cause and effect. 

In " Oversigt over die islandske Vulcaners Historie," by Th. 
Thoroddsen, Copenhagen, 1882 (pp. 170), I find the following 
statistics of earthquakes and their accompaniments in Iceland 
since the year a. d. iooo. These also are proof in support of the 
subsidence theory. There were fifty simple volcanic eruptions, 
without recorded earthquakes, in twenty different localities far 
removed from each other, generally small and of short duration. 
If accompanied by earthquakes, they were so insignificant that 
they are not mentioned in the above work. Many of them, 
toward the middle of the thirteenth century, were sub-marine. 
Of eruptions with recorded earthquakes, there were twenty 
from 1 151 to 1875; in almost all of these it is stated that the 



r 6o FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

earthquake preceded the eruption, sometimes by a month. Of 
many severe earthquakes without recorded eruptions, there 
were forty-four from 1013 to 1872; that of 1732 continued for 
two weeks; that of 1784 for twelve days; in that of 1789 the 
whole plain of Thingvalla, from the chasm of the Raven to that 
of All-Men, then a deep depression of one hundred feet, fifty 
square miles in extent, was lowered about two feet (sixty cen- 
timetres); that of 1808 was felt in various parts of the island. 
Most of these one hundred and fourteen disturbances occurred, 
for reasons before stated, in the neighborhood of the great vol- 
canic centres, especially of Hekla in the southwest, and Lake 
Myvatn in the northeast. 

From this resume we see that earthquakes have occurred at 
all seasons of the year, in every part of the island, and appar- 
ently independently of volcanoes, though sometimes accom- 
panying them ; and that they move in regions far removed from 
each other, at short intervals. The face of the country has 
been suddenly changed ; crevices and depressions have ap- 
peared ; the course of rivers has been altered, and great changes 
in the volume, locality and temperature of the geysers have 
been noticed. These convulsions were attended with famine, 
plague, much loss of farm property, and the death of at least 
one hundred persons. In the fifteenth century only four erup- 
tions were recorded, while in the thirteenth and fourteenth, and 
sixteenth to nineteenth, they were numerous and violent. 

The fact, therefore, seems undeniable, that subsidence is one 
of the chief features of modern earthquakes. 

Fissures in the ground, the result of earthquake subsidence, 
are extremely common in all parts of the globe, volcanic and 
non-volcanic. Most extraordinary chasms, evidently the result 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 161 

of subterranean causes of tremendous power, have been noticed 
in the moon. Some of these have been described by Prof. S. 
P. Langley in the .Century for March, 1885. One is the 
so-called " Railway," an almost straight line, on one side of 
which the ground has abruptly sunk, leaving the undisturbed 
part standing like a wall, and forming " a fault," as geologists 
call it. " This is one of the most conspicuous examples of its 
kind in the moon, but it is only one of many evidences that we 
are looking at a world whose geological history has been not 
wholly unlike our own. ... It cuts through plain and 
mountain for a length of sixty miles. Such cracks are counted 
by hundreds on the moon, where they are to be seen almost 
everywhere. . . . This one varies in width from an eighth 
of a mile to a mile ; and though we can not see the bottom of 
it, others are known to be at least eight miles deep, and may be 
indefinitely deeper." In these we cannot fail to be struck with 
the resemblance to terrestrial subsidence earthquake phenomena. 
The shocks which devastated Charleston, S. C, and the 
neighboring region, beginning August 31, 1886, and continuing 
at irregular intervals for several months, though so strange to 
the ordinary observer in this country, are in conformity to the 
theory of displacement, whether we adopt the theory of a land 
slide of the coastal region, or deep-seated subsidence. The 
latter theory seems to me the most probable, in view of the 
weight of the mountain range, the great area of disturbance, 
and the absence of any surface indications other than a few 
fissures. There were no volcanic phenomena observed, and 
the region between the Appalachian range and the Atlantic is 
far from any volcanic centre. It was probably several thousand 
feet below the surface, and over a lon^ line of fracture. 



1 62 FEACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

As specimens of earthquake subsidence may be mentioned 
the crater of Kilauea, and its contained lake of fire ; the valley 
of Thingvalla ; Taal crater in the Philippines, and the " Val del 
Bove " on Etna. During the shocks at New Madrid, Mo., in 
1811, which lasted many months, in a region far removed from 
a volcanic centre, there opened several long and deep fissures, 
and the site was known for a long time as the "sunk country." 
To these may be added the Yosemite Valley, which, I believe, 
is the result of a local subsidence, and not, except slightly, of 
glacial action. 

Before the Vesuvian eruption of April, 1872, there were 
numerous vibrations, without upheavings. Near Puzzuoli, on 
the Bay of Naples, a conical hill now known as Monte Nuovo, 
four hundred and forty feet high, was formed in one week ; from 
September 29 to October 5, 1538. It covered an area more 
than half a mile in diameter, in a space formerly occupied in 
part by the Lucrine Lake. For more than two years earth- 
quakes had prevailed in this region, the greatest being on 
September 27 and 28, when they were almost continuous. At 
eight a. m. on the twenty-ninth a depression was noticed at the 
site of the future hill. From this water began to issue ; at first 
cold, then tepid, then hot. As the heat increased, steam, scoriae, 
pumice and sand were poured out from a fissure in the swollen 
ground, which built up the hill, as now seen, chiefly in two days 
and nights. In the centre is avast circular depression; a crater 
of subsidence. The gradual increase in the heat, as evinced 
by the ejections, seems to indicate that it was an after product, 
and not the cause of the outburst. The earthquakes preceded 
the volcanic action. 

An earthquake is not in itself a permanent elevator, though 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL, AND SUBSIDENCE. ^3 

it often accompanies volcanic outbursts. The statement has 
been attributed to Dolomieu and Daubree, that an earthquake 
in a non-volcanic region is an effort to establish a volcano. It 
would be more correct to say, according to modern notions, that 
it is simply the shock from the fracture of strata unable to with- 
stand the stress, and of the thrust consequent on the secular 
refrigeration of the crust. Much heat is certainly thus devel- 
oped, but that can not fairly be called a volcanic attempt. It 
has been shown by Judd and others that, if a part of the earth's 
crust should have its temperature raised two hundred degrees 
Fahrenheit, its surface would be elevated one thousand to fif- 
teen hundred feet ; and it has been mentioned that Le Conte 
accounts, by the different rates of conduction of heat from the 
centre, for the great continental movements of past ages, and 
the existing inequalities of the earth's surface. 

The liability to recurrence in the same place is to be 
explained by the continuance of the cause ; one displacement 
prepares the way for a change from an unstable to a fixed equi- 
librium. When this is attained, there may be quiet for cent- 
uries, but it is more liable to disturbance as the geological 
cooling, contraction, and rupture go on, giving rise to an earth- 
quake. The shock at Lisbon, December 21, 1883, confirms this. 

On March 13, 1884, at Pocahontas, Va., there was the most 
remarkable and destructive coal mine explosion known in the 
annals of American mining. During the preceding twenty- 
four hours the barometer rose about thirty-five hundredths of 
an inch ; equivalent to an increased pressure of more than two 
hundred and fifty thousand tons per square mile. Such a sud- 
denly imposed weight must have compressed the coal beds, 
forcing out occluded gases in jets or " blowers," aided very 



1 64 FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. 

likely, and perhaps caused by a deep-seated dislocation of strata, 
or " fault," with the resulting escape of inflammable gas. 

In Harper's Magazine for June, 1885, Prof. Proctor has 
something to say on earthquakes, which he believes may be 
brought about by changes of atmospheric pressure. He states 
that a rise in the barometer of one half an inch over a space 
embracing ten thousand square miles, or less than one sixth of 
the State of Missouri, means an increased pressure on that area % 
of four thousand two hundred million tons. If an atmospheric 
wave passed over the United States, in the eastern half the 
barometer one half an inch lower than in the western half, and 
then one half an inch higher, it would be as if a mass of seven 
hundred thousand million tons had been shifted from west to 
east. Such and even greater changes take place, and must 
have an effect in producing subterranean disturbances. An 
increase in height of one inch in the mercurial barometer 
means six hundred and fifty pounds to each square foot, or 
about eight hundred and fifty-two thousand tons on a square 
mile. This must powerfully aid other causes, as weight of 
ocean on weak coast lines, and pent-up gases. The stillness 
and calm in the air preceding an earthquake are the result of 
increased atmospheric pressure or high barometer. Mr. Proc- 
tor's estimates are somewhat higher than those of other authors, 
but, even taking off one third, the force is a tremendous one. 

From this it may be admitted that barometric changes may 
occasionally determine the fracture of strata about to yield and 
cause an earthquake of more or less intensity. In the earth- 
quake, even in violent catastrophes, there is less laceration of 
the surface, though the destruction, even if superficial, is more 
extensive than in the local explosion of a coal mine. The 



FRACTURE, UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. ^5 

rumblings in Virginia were aerial rather than subterranean, and 
the duration longer. The earthquake usually does its work in 
less than half a minute. The Pocahontas movement was a 
violent, local disruption, with every accompaniment of explo- 
sion, and not the long-extending, comparatively noiseless wave 
of an earthquake. On the other hand, a few weeks before, in 
Pennsylvania, there was a sinking in of a coal mine, with no 
explosive violence ; the effect had quite the appearance, and 
was accompanied by the phenomena of an earthquake on a 
small scale. 

It may be claimed, therefore, that nearly all so-called earth- 
quakes, of modern times, have been the result of fracture and 
displacement, and especially of subsidence ; that only a few, 
insignificant and local, have been because of explosive force ; 
and that no region can be considered as exempt from their 
•occurrence. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 

Early records. — In 1645. — * n x 863, a most destructive earthquake. — In July, 1880, a three 
days' disturbance. — Great destruction of life and property. — Description by an eye- 
witness. — Effect on man and animals. — Premonitory symptoms. — Direction of the 
waves, and effects on buildings. — Explanation of origin. 

ON landing in Manila, not many steps can be taken in any 
direction without meeting evidences of the earthquakes 
which have visited this city and neighborhood. Ruined dwell- 
ings, shattered churches, dilapidated walls, and heaps of rub- 
bish are everywhere visible, the most of it the work of a few 
seconds in 1863 and 1880. Some of the destruction, however, 
dates back more than a century, and is now covered with creep- 
ing and climbing vegetation. 

The earlier records of these catastrophes in the Philippines 
are doubtless exaggerated. We read in them of mountains, 
though these are doubtless only hills, appearing and dis- 
appearing, of rivers swallowed up, of the formation of lakes, 
of eruptions of sand and ashes, and of great agitation of the sea. 
None of them, however, are sufficiently explicit to quote as any- 
thing more than evidences of uncommon subterranean violence, 
with great destruction of life and property and changes in the 
features of the country. Such a one was noticed by Aduarte 
in 1693, as having occurred in Luzon in November, 16 10, 
extending from Manila to the extreme north of the island, the 

166 



MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 1 67 

most terrible known at that time ; palm-trees were engulfed to 
their tops, the hills were moved bodily, and the soil waved like 
the ocean. 

One of the most memorable happened November 30, 1645. 
It was graphically described by Mr. F. E. Foster, in the Japan 
Daily Mail of May 26, 1877. At about 8 p. m., he says, the 
sky was clear and the sea calm, and the whole community in 
repose. Suddenly the city of Manila was precipitated into ruins. 
The sea rose with a broad swell, and lashed the very walls. 
Frightful noises fell upon the ear, the earth trembled, and 
animals cowered to the., ground in terror. Again and again 
were the shocks repeated ; walls cracked under the unseen 
power which swayed them. The people in fear sought refuge 
under doorways and arches, but roofs and timbers fell about 
them, immuring many in a common grave. The cries of the 
wounded and dying mingled with the crash of crumbling 
edifices. In less time than has been consumed in the narra- 
tion of the catastrophe, the destruction was complete. At day- 
break the sun shone upon the ruins of the capital, not one 
stone of which remained upon another. The cathedral, most 
of the churches and public buildings, and countless private 
ones, were ruined. 

Other severe shocks were experienced in 1699, 1796, 1825, 
and 1852; and on June 3, 1863, at 7.25 p. m., after a sultry 
day, during the vesper service of Corpus Christi, a severe earth- 
quake, with tremblings, waves of shock, and loud subterranean 
rumblings, took place. The cathedral roof fell in, burying a 
large part of the congregation in the ruins. Many of the 
worshippers were killed, and hundreds wounded. In the great 
square the Governor-General's palace was unroofed, and his 



1 68 MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 

family barely escaped with their lives. Most of the churches 
were rendered useless ; lofty towers fell, killing many persons, 
whose fate was tolled on the bells by unseen hands. Almost 
all the public buildings were levelled, or left untenantable ; 
nearly every private house suffered more or less damage,, 
though, from improved methods of construction, the loss of 
life was less than in previous catastrophes. The shock lasted 
only half a minute. The ground opened in many .places* 
giving forth gases, and the water in the river became dark and 
noisome. Every one who could fled to the light and elastic 
nipa houses of the . suburbs for safety. The loss of life was 
estimated at four hundred, and of property at eight million 
dollars. There seemed to be two waves ; one from south to 
north, and the second from east to west ; and some fancied, 
there were circular movements, but as the observations were 
made without instruments, and under great fear and excite- 
ment, in the time of half a minute, they cannot be looked 
upon as reliable. 

Again, after years of quiet, and when the country was 
remarkably prosperous, on the eighteenth and twentieth of 
July, 1880, there came a series of very violent shocks, throw- 
ing the community into despair and terror, and paralyzing the 
progress of the province. It seems a question difficult to solve, 
whether the inexhaustible fertility of these islands is not, like 
the charms of Circe, a lure to destruction. Subject as they 
are to the typhoon and the earthquake, the end is almost 
certain to be desolation and death, and one against which 
neither foresight can prevail, nor strength nor precaution 
protect. 

At 1240 p. m., on Sunday, the eighteenth of July, the shock 




Mm 

lUf tip 




MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 1 y I 

began in Manila, with tremblings and complicated movements, 
continuing for seventy seconds. On Tuesday, the twentieth, 
it commenced at 340 p. m., lasting forty-five seconds. The 
second shock was more violent than the first, and completed 
the destruction which the first had caused. Surprise gave way 
to terror, and the people fled by land and river to the country. 
Fortunately both attacks happened in the day time, and the 
movements were slow, or the loss of life must have been great. 
The principal danger was from the downfall of the tiled roofs, 
which are now largely replaced by galvanized iron. 

The Sunday movement came on gradually, like a long wave ; 
but on Tuesday, after a few premonitory tremblings for an hour 
or two, there followed a sudden and irregular shaking, which 
gave no such chance of escape from the houses as did the first 
one. At ten p. m. on Tuesday, a third shock occurred. This 
was not a severe one ; simply knocking furniture about, but 
doing no serious damage, for there was now little to destroy. 

The tremblings grew more frequent and marked than the 
oscillations or waves of shock, especially after the first day, in 
which the general direction was north to south. The bed of 
the river Pasig was disturbed with an upheaving of a dark fluid 
of a sulphurous odor, but without injury to the bridges. In 
many places within the city the soil cracked, with the eruption 
of fine sand and dirty water. 

While viewing the ruins, sixteen months after, I gathered, 
from members of my family and other eye-witnesses, some 
interesting details. After hearing the first sound, which was 
as if hundreds of carriages were being dashed to pieces on a 
broken pavement, an incomprehensible faintness was experi- 
enced, causing a feeling of nausea, with inability to fly from the 



I 72 MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 

danger. It was as if one were on the deck of a vessel, tossed 
by the waves, instead of a building of stone or timber, on the 
ground ; it seemed as if the essence of several hours' seasick- 
ness were concentrated into a second. Mingled with this came 
strange rumblings, as if rocks were rolling and resounding over 
deep abysses, and sharp clashings as of glass shattered, caused 
by the rolling of furniture on the bare floors, and the breaking 
of mirrors and chandeliers. When sense returned a rush was 
made to the stairs and balconies, into the court-yards, streets and 
squares, under arches, or wherever seemed a place of security. 

The disturbance extended to the suburbs of the city, and in 
fact to most of the island, where the soil appeared like the 
waves of the sea. Trees were uprooted, and towns and vil- 
lages, amid clouds of whitish dust, became a chaotic mass of 
ruins. Every animal exhibited signs of terror; pigs, dogs, 
poultry, even lizards, felt the impending danger, and united in 
loud and unnatural noises. Horses stopped in the street 
vehicles, standing with ears erect, with staring eyes, and stiffly 
extended legs, as if conscious of extraordinary peril. The 
natives would give no response to appeals for help, but, care- 
less of consequences, were either seeking safety themselves, or 
were on their knees in the highways and squares, with other 
timorous Catholics around them. 

After the calamity, fallen tiles left exposed the skeleton ribs 
of the house roofs ; hanging beams and swinging rafters threat- 
ened to fall upon the passer-by. A suffocating dust filled the 
air ; broken arches, leaning walls, blinds in fragments, piles of 
useless furniture, and shapeless heaps of stone, met the eye in 
every direction. Dwellings open to the sky, and general ruin, 
were everywhere. Stone houses were abandoned for the 




CHURCH AT MANILA. 



MANILA EARTHQUAKES. I75 

thatched huts of the suburbs. An earthquake undoes in a 
minute the work of centuries, and even in a few seconds makes 
a city look as if sacked by a besieging enemy. The silence is 
interrupted only by an occasional cry for assistance, or the 
crash of a falling building ; man is exhausted, and inanimate 
nature sleeps after these geological catastrophes. 

The first great quake in Manila was not without premoni- 
tory symptoms. Even as early as April and May commotions 
were noticed in the northern provinces of Luzon. The centre 
of disturbance seemed to be a long-extinct volcano in lati- 
tude sixteen degrees and twenty-two minutes north, between 
Lepanto and Abra, in the central Cordillera. At first weak 
and infrequent, in June they became more intense, extending 
north and south, and east and west; any apparent divergence 
from these points being probably due to the want of special 
instruments and errors of hasty and excited observation. In 
the beginning of July a few shocks were felt, but from the 
fifth to the fourteenth no news of any in the island had been 
received in Manila. On the fourteenth, at 12.53 p. m., the 
weather being threatening, as indicated in the northeast by 
an extraordinary fall of the barometer, the first shock was 
experienced in the city. In this there appeared to be two 
centres of oscillation combined ; one was between east and 
south, whence the pendulum of the horizontal seismometer 
began to move, and the other between south and west, by 
which the first movement terminated ; this was principally in 
a horizontal direction, the amplitude of oscillation being about 
five and one half degrees. The horizontal pendulum described 
a cross, arms of which intersected almost at right angles ; the 
first from about southeast to northwest, and the second from 



Ij6 MANILA EARTHQUAKES. 

about southwest to northeast. The second oscillation was a 
violent one ; the vertical movement registered was sixteen one- 
hundredths of an inch. 

On the eighteenth, when the great shock took place, the 
movements of the seismometer were very intricate, as may 
be seen by examining the diagrams of Padre Faura of the 
Observatory, published in Manila at the time. On his author- 
ity it may be stated that only the greatest oscillation, from east 
to west, and the one most regular and without violence, indi- 
cates the true inclination of the buildings toward the west. 

Of the three shocks, the first showed the greatest oscillation 
from east to west, the maximum width of seismic deviation 
being twenty-two degrees, or eleven degrees to each side; in 
the second, nearly at right angles to this, the deviation was 
nineteen degrees, and in the third, intersecting these two, 
sixteen degrees. The impulse, consequently, appears to have 
been from north to south ; the vertical displacement was one 
and one third inches. 

The inclination of buildings was not equal to the deviation 
of the pendulum ; but it is impossible to measure the strain 
they must have undergone in such repeated and violent move- 
ments. Taking into consideration the horizontal and vertical 
oscillations, it is remarkable that their destruction was not 
greater. The pendulum, which had not ceased moving from 
the eighteenth to the twenty-first, in the three following days 
had considerable periods of rest. 

It is not difficult to find the explanation of these movements, 
in a general way, in the rupture of the over-strained strata, with 
some elevation, but doubtless much greater subsidence in this 
region weighted by a chain of mountains, underlaid by large 



MANILA EARTHQUAKES. iyj 

volcanic cavities. The shock reached Manila in various direc- 
tions and with differing violence, according to the complexity 
of the fractures, and the character and line of the strata which 
conveyed the impulses to the points of destruction. The pre- 
liminary shocks, preparatory to the great ones, and the phe- 
nomena noted by most competent observers, with accurate 
instruments, seem fully and naturally accounted for on the 
theory of secular contraction, and consequent folding, rupture, 
and displacement. This full statement of details will render 
unnecessary minute accounts of other earthquakes, and these 
will be briefly noticed hereafter. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. 

Incidents and accidents. — The cottage more safe than the palace; the boat on the river 
than a carriage on land. — The best way to build houses there. — Japanese earthquakes 
in Tokio. — Prof. Milne's book and opinions. — Explosive effects as a cause. 

IN the midst of this commotion of 1880, it is said that the 
barometer gave no indication of atmospheric disturbance, 
showing that, in this case, at least, the cause was wholly terres- 
trial. The suburbs, particularly along the course of the river, 
suffered more than did the city proper. 

Where my friends resided, in San Miguel, the shock was 
especially violent. The household were at breakfast, and of 
course left the table in a hurry, seeking the outside air, some 
by the windows, and some by the stone staircase ; one was 
caught in the falling roof, and sustained injuries which required 
amputation of an arm at the shoulder. Had they remained at 
the table, no one would have been hurt ; but, of course, the 
natural impulse, and usually the safest, is to get beyond the 
danger of falling walls and tiles. Most of the rear part of 
the house, on the river side, was so damaged that it remained 
for a long time untenanted. In San Antonio, near the city, 
for the length of more than four miles, and a width of three 
hundred and fifty feet, the ground opened in many places ; 
some portions were raised five or six feet, and others were 
equally depressed. 

178 



MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. T jg 

The volcanoes of Taal and Bulusan, which had been quiet 
for many years, threw out much vapor, with an alleged dimi- 
nution of the severity of the shocks in their neighborhood. 
Mayon took on at this time an unwonted activity, and con- 
tinued to throw out lava, ashes and gases for more than two 
years, It is popularly believed that the great volcano acted as 
a safety valve, preserving the province, and perhaps the island, 
from a serious catastrophe. There could, however, scarcely be 
any general connection in this respect between the earthquake 
and the volcano, except that the former caused the latter, and 
not vice versa. It may have been that some local rupture from 
pent-up gases was at the same time prevented by this constant 
drain of material, and that the cavities produced by the emis- 
sion of lava, predispose to an earthquake subsidence, when the 
stress and weight can no longer be resisted. 

Amid all the confusion and terror the newspapers failed not 
of their duty to the public. The " Diario de Manila" went to 
press in the middle of the street, its building being considered 
unsafe. The city was turned into a tented field, and the river 
and bay were densely peopled. Everything that had wheels, or 
could float, was loaded with persons and property seeking 
safety. Palace and prison, church and shop, street and bridge, 
house and hut, barrack and hospital, were alike prostrated and 
rendered useless. The thatched hovel was of more value in 
such an hour than the mansion of stone ; a boat on the river 
than a palace on land. Carriages with silks and jewels, carts 
with rich or homely furniture, the head-carried baskets of the 
Chinese, and the palm-leaf tampipis of the Indians, blocked 
the streets on their way out of the walled city. Fear brought 
pride and poverty into close communion ; the quarrels and 



j8o MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. 

petty grievances of the past werfc forgotten and forgiven in the 
all-absorbing common danger; but, like a supposed death-bed 
repentance, an earthquake reconciliation amounts to very little 
when the danger has passed. 

The disasters closed on the twenty-sixth with a severe, all- 
night rain, accompanied with violent gusts of wind. This 
increased the loss in furniture and other property that was 
of necessity exposed to the elements. Most of the people 
in the thatched houses suffered from wet, and there was 
much sickness in consequence, especially among children and 
invalids. 

Experience has taught that in countries subject to earth- 
quakes it is necessary to build the houses low, with a founda- 
tion of volcanic tufa, whose many interstices render it elastic. 
Above all things, the structure should rest on wooden posts, 
incased or not in the stone, but independent of it ; and for the 
heavy roof tiles should be substituted sheets of galvanized iron. 
Lightness and elasticity are sought for, and these the wooden, 
bamboo and nipa houses of the country have to such a degree 
that, with the aid of lateral supports, they may be regarded as 
nearly earthquake-proof. 

Many violent earthquakes have occurred of late years in 
Japan, and one in 1880, the year of the last one in Manila. 
Interesting observations on the phenomena are given in the 
u Japan Weekly Mail" of October 8, 1881, by J. Milne, and by 
W. S. Chaplin, in the " Transactions of the Asiatic Society of 
Japan," April, 1878. These differ much from Mr. Perrey's 
results, and confirm in the main the views of Mallet, while at 
the same time they indicate a connection with astronomical 
and meteorological causes. In this paper it is claimed that 



MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. 583 

earthquake phenomena have been most frequent when the sun 
was two hours east and eight hours west of the meridian, and 
when the moon was two and nine hours east and seven hours 
west, and least at the upper transit. Of one hundred and forty- 
three cases thirty-two were at conjunction of moon with sun, 
thirty-seven at opposition, and seventy-four at quadrature ; in 
summer sixty-nine, in winter seventy-four; when the moon was 
north of the equator sixty-one, south eighty-two, and the maxi- 
mum at seven and eleven hours after the moon's perigee, or 
when nearest the earth. These are taken from the records of 
the Tokio Observatory. , 

A severe earthquake shook Tokio January 15, 1887; one in 
Hawaii, and an eruption of Mauna Loa, occurred on the same 
day. The concurrence of the earth vibrations in these two 
remote places would seem to show that both are situated over 
the same fissure or line of weakness in the crust. 

In searching for the origin of these and the Manila earth- 
quakes we naturally turn to the volcanic districts ; in Japan 
these extend from northwest to south-southwest, but most of 
the volcanoes are extinct, except for such eruptions of vapor 
and sulphurous hot springs as exist at Ogigoko. We know 
that there are geological "faults," indicating recent movements 
of the crust, and that they were preceded and followed by 
many lesser tremblings in one direction. The great shock in 
Japan was on February 22, 1880, from the north-northwest; 
that of Manila July 18, but from April signs of disturbance 
had been noticed in the northern provinces. It must be re- 
membered that the Philippines are situated in the volcanic 
chain which extends from the Kurile islands, through Japan, 
to Java and Australia; both shocks may have been due to 



1 84 MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. 

the same progressive fracture from tension along this line of 
weakness. 

Both in Tokio plain and in Manila, Mallet's statements were 
confirmed, that, in a rectangular building, the walls at right 
angles to the shock are most likely to be overthrown. In 
1863 houses seemed to move in an undulating manner from 
east to west, the course being south ; but when the movement 
is slight, the walls at right angles would sway back and forth, 
without coming down, while the others, contracting and ex- 
panding in their length, would give way at their weakest 
points, or in their various openings. 

The latest authority on earthquakes is Prof. John Milne, 
above quoted, whose work, No. 55 in the " International Scien- 
tific Series," 1886, will be of extreme interest to all interested 
in the subject of seismology. He treats of the subdivisions 
of earth movements, with instrumental, mathematical, physi- 
cal, and meteorological details that are quite out of place in 
a book for popular reading. His work pertains chiefly to 
Japan, where his observations were made, and he adopts 
essentially the views of Mallet, from whom he quotes largely. 
It is rather non-committal, as it enumerates among primary 
causes telluric and solar heats, and variations of gravitating 
influences. Among the secondary he places expansions and 
contractions of the earth's crust, changes in temperature and 
barometric pressure, rain, wind, solar and lunar attraction, 
and variations in the distribution of stress in the crust ; after- 
ward he calls the primary causes endogenous, and the second- 
ary exogenous. The latter, he thinks, play a very subordinate 
part. He says, finally, that the majority of earthquakes are due 
to explosive efforts in volcanic foci, most of them taking place 



MANILA AND JAPAN EARl'HQUAKES. iS$ 

beneath the sea, and due to the entrance of water through fis- 
sures to heated strata below. He admits that some are pro- 
duced by the sudden fracture of rocky strata, causing " faults," 
attributable to stresses brought about by elevatory pressures ; 
and some to the collapse of underground excavations. I am 
inclined to the belief that the explosions are not the cause, but 
the consequences of fractures of the crust. 

In the " London Times " of August 7, 1884, is a communica- 
tion from John Mime on the earthquake of Japan, in 18S0, and 
that of England in April, 1884, in which he states that the 
maximum distance through which a point of the earth moved 
to and fro in the former was one inch, in the latter somewhat 
less. The intensity of the shock is not determined by this 
movement, which depends rather on the acceleration or sudden- 
ness of the motions. Movements may be large, but so slow as 
to be hardly noticeable except by instruments. They may be, 
on the other hand, not more than one tenth of an inch, and yet 
from their suddenness felt as very severe. The suddenness in 
the English one was equal to a rate of motion of two feet per 
second ; so slow that persons saw buildings falling, but noticed 
no motion of the ground. 

As earthquakes usually depend on displacement or rupture, 
the first indications commonly noticed are minute tremors (pre- 
paratory), with or without sound, and perhaps six or eight in a 
second ; then comes the shock (the rupture), consisting of two 
or three back and forth movements of large amplitude, ending 
by a series of irregular movements, longer and longer as the 
disturbance dies out (the parts implicated settling to rest). At 
a distance nothing would be noticed but a series of slow pulse- 
like movements or waves ; as on a water surface disturbed by a 



1 86 MANILA AND JAPAN EARTHQUAKES. 

stone, the outer circle is hardly distinguishable. It is difficult to 
record the whole duration, as the first movements are lost from 
their extreme smallness, and the last by their extreme slowness. 
The waves produced may be in all, and in complicated lines,, 
accordins* to the character of the strata involved. The earth- 
quake soon classifies buildings as to stability. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

Island of Ischia. — Bathing establishments. — Delightful summer resort for Neapolitans. — 
Earthquake of 1883 at night. — Deep seated and extended. — Great destruction of build- 
ings and loss of life. — Worst at Casamicciola. — Made up of the tufas and lavas of the 
volcano Epomeo, an extinct crater. — Probably from subsidence. — Absence of volcanic 
phenomena. — Earthquake in Southern Spain in 1884. — Barometric changes. — Result of 
fracture in the mountain masses, and a weak coast line. — Northern Italy and Southern 
France. — Probably from fracture in the Apennines and Mediterranean basin, in 1887. 

IF there were any place outside the tropics which can lay 
claim to be an earthly paradise, it was the beautiful island 
of Ischia (/sola Bella), the " Pithecusa " of the ancients. It is 
the largest island of the bay of Naples, having a circumference 
of about twenty miles, and thirty thousand inhabitants, mostly 
fishermen, brick-makers, and cultivators of grain, vines, and 
fruits. 

From a distance it looks like a double-crested pyramid, the 
highest point being the extinct volcano, Epomeo, about twenty- 
six hundred feet high. This is much older than Vesuvius, and 
was once the principal volcanic vent of the region. There are 
records that its inhabitants, five centuries b. c, were driven 
away by its eruptions and accompanying earthquakes. Other 
destructive eruptions were 92 b. c, and until the third century 
a. d. ; Homer and Virgil allude to it as the prison house of one 
of the giants, prostrated by Jupiter. It was last active in 1301. 

187 



1 88 ISC HI A, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

At some points the island-sides are steep and rocky ; at 
others are gently sloping beaches ; but everywhere it is pictu- 
resque. It is wholly volcanic in structure, with the exception 
of certain elevations of marine clays, derived from pre-existing 
volcanic matters. 

The island is about one and one half hours' sail by steamer 
from Naples. Travellers generally go as far as Casamicciola, 
and rarely beyond. The first landing-place is the town of 
Ischia, which has about sixty-five hundred inhabitants. Its 
harbor is an old crater. The principal road extends along the 
shore, over the north half of the island, by Casamicciola on 
the east, Lacco on the north, and Forio on the west; towns 
all nearly destroyed in July, 1883. The views along these 
roads are exceedingly beautiful. Near Ischia are famous warm 
baths, of late less popular than those of Casamicciola. Fifteen 
minutes by steamer, or an hour's donkey ride, will bring the 
traveller to Casamicciola, a town of some four thousand inhabit- 
ants, where in the summer were always to be found a crowd 
of invalids, and a few pleasure-seekers enjoying its celebrated 
warm baths. From the landing, a ride of fifteen minutes by 
donkey or vehicle brings the tourist to the hotel. 

The town is at the north base of Epomeo, on two hills, with 
two more to the east, each seven hundred and fifty and eight 
hundred feet high. The sides of the mountain and the terraced 
valleys were studded with hotels, villas, and bathing establish- 
ments, all depending for support on the saline, alkaline, sul- 
phur, and carbonic acid waters, gushing out from rock and soil, 
with temperatures varying from seventy to one hundred and 
seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. The magnificent views of the 
Mediterranean, with Vesuvius in the distance, backed by the 




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ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. I9I 

snow-capped Abruzzi, the genial climate, the picturesque situa- 
tions, the blue skies and the golden sunsets, the luxuriant ver- 
dure, the bright houses, the fine hotels and the healing waters, 
made this semi-tropical dreamy island one of the most delight- 
ful of summer resorts. To-day it is little more than a heap of 
crumbling ruins, the tomb of many unburied dead, and proba- 
bly never again to be a popular watering place. Half an hour's 
w r alk brings the visitor to Lacco, on the north side of the island, 
with seme sixteen hundred fishermen as residents, and another 
hour to Forio, on the west, with six thousand three hundred 
inhabitants; both were dependent on the summer visitors to 
the bathing establishments, though many wealthy proprietors 
resided at the latter. Both are now in ruins. 

Among the bathing establishments some were fitted up in 
the most luxurious and Pompeiian style. The " Monte della 
Misericordia " was an extensive, and always crowded establish- 
ment, exclusively for the poor, founded in 1600 by a society of 
nobles, who annually sent from Naples, free of expense, many 
invalids, who were cared for by skillful physicians. 

Among the hotels the most aristocratic was the " Piccola 
Sentinella." It was very large, and was built in terraces, in a 
charmingly picturesque situation, surrounded by orange groves, 
olive trees, and flowers and flowering shrubs of every hue. 
The " Grande Sentinella " and the " Central " were more demo- 
cratic. The villa " Balsamo " stood in the midst of beautiful 
gardens, and beside these were many private villas and board- 
ing houses. 

The shock of July 28, 1883, occurred at 9.25 p. m., so that 
utter darkness added to the horror of the scene, and most of 
the residents, a large number of whom were invalids, were in 



1 92 ISC HI A, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

their houses. It lasted twenty seconds, during which Casamic- 
ciola, Lacco and Forio were nearly destroyed, with the loss of 
two thousand lives. Ischia suffered very little. That the dis- 
turbance was deep-seated and extensive is shown by the fact 
that it was indicated by instruments at Rome nearly two hun- 
dred miles distant. The shock at first was vertical, and then 
the wave was propagated in various directions according to the 
nature of the soil ; the cracks in the buildings indicated a pre- 
vailing vertical movement. 

The most heart-rending scenes occurred in Naples the next 
day, where the hospitals were crowded with the wounded, and 
the dead-houses filled w T ith the bodies of the victims. Of the 
bodies recovered from the ruins most were so disfigured that 
they could hardly be recognized except by clothing. The 
majority of the killed were women and children, and invalids 
of high and low degree. All the police force was killed, ren- 
dering organized aid almost impossible in the general terror. 
Many persons who might have been saved by prompt assist- 
ance perished beneath the ruins. 

Of the foreigners saved the greater part were those who were 
at the theatre, where, singularly enough, the play was a bur- 
lesque, which opened with an earthquake scene. Survivors 
passed the night in darkness and fear, not daring to move, even 
to help those calling for aid among the ruins. A force of sol- 
diers arrived the next day (Sunday), and rescued many sufferers 
even as late as Monday morning. Scarcely half a dozen houses 
were left standing. About forty persons were entombed in the 
" Piccola Sentinella," of whom only one fourth were saved. 
Temporary wooden huts were erected for the houseless, and 
government and private aid freely given. No Italian convul- 



ISC HI A, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. I93 

sion has been so destructive since a. d 79, except the Calabrian 
one in ijS^y which was felt all over Europe, and is said to have 
killed sixty thousand people. This was no doubt caused by a 
sinking, similar to that which I believe produced the Casamic- 
ciola earthquakes of March, 1881, and July, 1883. 

The geological structure of the island throws some light on 
the nature of this earthquake. The oldest strata are the green- 
ish tufas of Epomeo, overlaid by trachytic lava. Over this are 
extensive beds of clayey decomposition of this tufa under water, 
upon which Casamicciola was built ; the most recent are grav- 
elly clays, containing many marine fossil shells of species now 
living, indicating a comparatively recent submergence and sub- 
sequent elevation. Hot springs, jets of steam and sulphurous 
gases abound, especially in the northern part, on a line running 
from Ischia west to Forio, passing under Casamicciola, which is 
about midway. 

Signor Baldacci has expressed the opinion that there are two 
lines of cleavage; one as above given, and the other from Lacco 
to the southern extremity of the island, crossing the first at 
Casamicciola. Prof. Rossi thinks that there is a superposition 
of the crater of Epomeo upon another older and submarine 
one. The latter theory seems most probable, and would con- 
firm Prof. Palmieri's theory of subsidence. The last better 
explains the slight preparatory shocks and rumblings, and as 
well accounts for the irregularity in heat and quantity of the 
springs and the activity of the gas-jets. 

Casamicciola was built almost entirely on the non-elastic clay 
strata, and Forio on the tufa. That part of Lacco on the more 
elastic trachyte, and Ischia, suffered little. . In the trachyte 
not only the direction, but the velocity, of the earth-wave was 



1 94 ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

changed. Other lesser shocks and rumblings occurred after- 
ward ; as what I regard as the sunken strata settled to compara- 
tive fixity. These can hardly be explained by the awakening of 
any residual activity in Epomeo, which has been quiet for six 
centuries, except for its minor phenomena of hot springs and 
jets of steam and gas. 

According to Palmieri, great caverns (not the petty ones 
in the plastic clay) worn by heated waters and corroding 
gases, at unknown, but great depths, fell in from loss of 
support, from vertical or lateral pressure, and thus produced 
the earth shock. The causes which originated them act at 
present, and will doubtless continue ; so that prudence says, 
" flee from, and return not to, this beautiful but treacherous 
paradise." 

Two great lands slides on the steep north side of Epomeo r 
and fissures in the ground on the south slope, favor the 
subsidence theory. Though the roads were destroyed, and the 
houses levelled, the former showed no signs of sinking, but 
they were fissured longitudinally and transversely; the cause 
was too deep for that. There was no evidence of the escape of 
lava, or unusual amounts of steam or gases ; no sudden rising 
of the soil, or sign of subterranean explosion. Additional facts 
in favor of this catastrophe being rather a subsidence than 
a volcanic disturbance — a repetition, on a far larger scale of 
that of March, 1881 — are the local character of the destruction, 
and the subsequent lesser ones even to July, 1884, and again in 
August, 1886. The Ischian earthquake of March, 1881, was, 
according to Dr. Lasaulx, but slightly felt on Procida, and not 
at all on the mainland. From this he infers that its origin 
must have been at a less depth than the bottom of the inter- 



ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 195 

vening strait. It occurred in an east and west oval, north of 
the Epomeo centre. He maintains that it was due not to 
volcanic activity, but to subsidence, from hollows removed by 
the numerous hot springs, whose temperature is raised before 
and during the catastrophe ; that of 1883 was far deeper. 

The earthquake in Southern Spain, already mentioned, 
occurred just before nine p. m. of December 25, 1884. There 
were slight premonitions on the morning of the twenty-second, 
far extending, even to the Azores ; the shocks were followed 
by a long series of oscillations up to February, 1885. The 
worst shock was on Christmas day, and was plainly felt in 
Madrid. In the southern provinces along the Mediterranean, 
especially at Granada and Malaga, there was great loss of 
life, and destruction of property. There were many land- 
slips and crevasses, which seemed best explained by deep- 
seated subsidence. An unusually high atmospheric pressure 
prevailed over Spain in the first half of December, while on 
December 20 a heavy storm, with unusual barometric depres- 
sion, passed over from the northeast, reaching the Mediter- 
ranean on the twenty-second, or a few days before the principal 
shock. 

In a paper contributed to " Nature," Mr. MacPherson writes : 
" The Mediterranean watershed at Andalusia shows two great 
mountain masses, chiefly of archaic deposits ; both run in a series 
of faults and folds from southwest to northeast, and between 
them is an interval filled with primary, secondary, and tertiary 
deposits, in the middle of which, in the later ones, is a series of 
archaic ridges running northwest to southeast ; and evidently 
a part of a greater archaic formation, separated from adjoining 
rocks by a subsidence on both sides. From frequent oscilla- 



1 96 ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

tions this isolated portion has been covered by a thick mantle 
of sediment, and its structure is the result of the great fracture 
which crosses the peninsula from northwest to southeast. The 
most violent shocks were in this very belt, broken by the 
secular disturbances of the crust of the globe, to which Prevost, 
LeConte, Mallet, and others after them, have drawn attention 
as frequent, if not the principal causes of earthquakes. In the 
Spanish shocks we see the possible influence of barometric 
changes in modifying pressure of the surface. These, in con- 
nection with heavy mountain masses on a longer line of 
fracture, and on the edge of the weak coast line of the 
Mediterranean, sufficiently account for the phenomena without 
any known explosive or volcanic accompaniments. Whether 
subsidence or elevation prevailed, the fact of rupture and dis- 
placement, with consequent shock, in a much faulted region, 
seems clearly made out." 

On February 23, 1887, between six and ten a. m. occurred a 
series of heavy shocks over Northern Italy and Southern France. 
They extended from Genoa to Marseilles, along the Mediter- 
ranean coast, and included Nice, Cannes, Mentone, Monte 
Carlo, and their vicinity. They caused a loss of at least two 
thousand lives, and much valuable property ; the so-called 
Italian Riviera suffered most. The longest single shock seems 
to have been twenty seconds, but they occurred at varying 
intervals for several hours, and even for two or three days. 
The loss of life in the mountain villages was largely due to 
the houses being placed on terraces built out on their sides, 
a slight disturbance of their foundations being sufficient to 
precipitate them, with all their contents, into the valley below, 
and to render escape or rescue impossible. 



ISCHIA, SPAIN A AD THE RIVIERA. lg7 

The phenomena, detailed with such horrifying minuteness in 
the daily papers, were in no wise peculiar, and resembled very 
closely those attending the Charleston earthquake of 1886. 
The cause and origin do not seem to require much discussion ; 
the seat or centre of disturbance was evidently in the deep 
strata of the Maritime Alps and the connected Apennines, 
bordering on the shores of the Mediterranean basin. The 
movements apparently extended even to Avignon and Geneva, 
showing a very wide area of convulsion. It is stated that the 
seismoscope in Washington recorded a disturbance at 7.50 a. m. 
on the twenty-third instant ; but there is no certain evidence 
that this was a transmission of the European wave across the 
Atlantic. It was probably also a mere coincidence that there 
occurred an annular eclipse of the sun on February 22, on 
account of which the Berlin papers prophesied unusual seismic 
phenomena, from the combined influence of the sun and moon 
on the earth. 

The supposition has been made that the shocks were occa- 
sioned by the fracture of some part of the crust of the earth in 
the region implicated, from the secular cooling of our globe, 
and that the immediate cause of this fracture was the weight 
of the immense mountain chains of the Alps and the Apen- 
nines on the line of weakness along the border of the deep 
Mediterranean. If this is correct further shocks may be ex- 
pected, similar to that which occurred at Charleston, until the 
strata come to a stable equilibrium, after which they may 
remain at rest for centuries. This is also the belief of M. M. 
Flammarion, Mouchez, and Daubree, as to the recurrence of 
the shocks. It is probable that there is a geologic fracture or 
line of weakness in the Mediterranean basin itself, parallel to 



198 ISCHIA, SPAIN AND THE RIVIERA. 

the Ligurian coast. For a considerable period before the 
disturbances there had been many sudden changes in baro- 
metric pressure, chiefly from low to high. This may in many 
cases explain the dizziness, oppressive breathing and nausea, 
which so often accompany and render perceptible an earth- 
quake shock. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, AND THE 

ATLANTIC SEABOARD. 

New England earthquakes for two hundred and fifty years. — Shock at Panama in 1882. — 
Inauspicious for an isthmus canal. — In Mississippi Valley. — The Charleston earthquake 
of 1886. — Severest and most extensive in United States. — Surface indications. — Direc- 
tion. — Probably deep-seated, and connected with a dislocation in the Appalachian range, 
and a displacement of the coastal plain. — Perhaps associated with subsidence in the 
lowest strata. — Speculations. 

1 

THE fact that earthquakes of considerable violence occur 
in North America, both within and beyond volcanic cen- 
tres, is generally known. 

In New England, in two hundred and fifty years, ending in 
1870, there were two hundred and thirty-one recorded earth- 
quakes, and doubtless quite as many unrecorded. Of these 
one hundred and forty-eight took place in the winter months, 
seventy-four in the summer, and nine are not specified. Some 
have already been alluded to in previous chapters. 

In 1885 fifty-nine earthquakes were recorded, more than two 
thirds of which were on the Pacific slope of the United States 
and British Possessions. From 1872 to 1883 three hundred 
and sixty-four were recorded ; one hundred and forty-seven on 
the Atlantic slope, sixty-six in the Mississippi Valley, and one 
hundred and fifty-one on the Pacific slope. 

On September 7, 1882, a very severe shock, lasting a minute, 

199 



200 AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 

occurred in Panama, beginning at 3.18 a. m. Walls tumbled 
into the streets. The front of the old cathedral was ruined, and 
its tottering arches were afterwards demolished ; the court 
house, with its massive stone columns, became a heap of ruins. 
The Canal hotel, purchased for the company for two hundred 
thousand dollars, swayed and cracked, with much damage to its 
walls ; furniture and glass were broken. The people rushed 
out-doors, seeking safety in empty spaces, as if all danger was 
from above ; and the greatest terror prevailed till daylight ap- 
peared. The ships in the bay felt the shock, as did the islands 
and the suburbs. It did not extend into Nicaragua nor South 
America, the wave travelling in a northeast direction. It is 
said the barometer did not fall. It was the most severe earth- 
quake ever known on the isthmus, and had it lasted a few 
seconds longer, would have totally destroyed Panama. What 
effect this would have had in the mountains and river valleys 
in the course of the proposed canal, may easily be imagined ; 
earthquake and financial shocks, climatic and meteorological 
obstacles, seem to combine to prevent inter-oceanic transit at 
this place. 

After the Panama disturbance, on September 27, there was a 
series of shocks in the Mississippi Valley, in a non-volcanic 
region, which seem to point rather to atmospheric than geo- 
logic causes, though both probably had a share in their produc- 
tion. They happened at a time when a great aerial disturbance,, 
with sudden and large barometric fluctuations, had prevailed 
over the temperate and tropical zones of North America. 

In a recent report to the British Association, Mr. George 
Darwin shows that when the barometer rises an inch over a 
land region as large as Australia, the increased load of air sinks 



AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 2 OI 

the entire continent two or three inches below the normal level, 
while over an equal oceanic area the water surface may be 
depressed a foot or more. It is probable that to such transient 
changes of stress many of the slight vibrations of the crust 
may be due, and this may be the explanation of the tremors in 
the Mississippi Valley. 

In 1812 similar phenomena took place in the same region, 
though of much greater severity, namely : in Indiana, Illinois 
and Missouri ; in fact the disturbance involved nearly half the 
hemisphere, and ended in the upheaval of Sabrina, one of the 
Azores, three hundred and twenty feet above the sea, the erup- 
tion of St. Vincent volcano, and the destruction of Caraccas, 
with ten thousand people. New Madrid, Mo., was one of the 
foci of this extended earthquake, in which the shocks were 
repeated almost every hour for months in succession. It was 
noticed that on the night of the Caraccas earthquake the sub- 
terranean forces at New Madrid were most intensely active. 
According to Dr. J. W. Foster, near the latter, fissures six hun- 
dred feet long and twenty broad formed, out of which water 
and sand were ejected to the height of forty feet. The shocks 
were severely felt in the Ohio Valley, and over a wide area of 
the Mississippi basin. The shocks in 1882 are said to have 
come from the west, as did those in New Madrid in 181 2. Had 
they been of similar severity, the cities of this river valley 
would have been utterly destroyed. 

The earthquake which desolated Charleston, S. C, prob- 
ablv orio-inated in Eastern North Carolina, where it seems 
to have been noticed, according to Prof. Powell, at 9.50 p. m., 
August 31, 1886, reaching Charleston a- few minutes before 
9 p. m. As it occurred at night, the terror and confusion were 



202 AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 

extreme, people leaving the falling and trembling houses, and 
seeking refuge in the widest streets and squares, clad in most 
cases only in their night clothes. 

This was the most severe shock on record in the United 
States, and affected the greatest area, namely: nine hundred 
thousand square miles, or one fourth of the country. This 
included a region extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
great lakes and Southern New England, and from the Atlantic 
seaboard to the Central Mississippi Valley. Its origin was 
apparently along the line of post-tertiary dislocation, on the 
eastern flanks of the Appalachians, especially where it crosses 
North Carolina. From this it spread rapidly in all directions, 
with a velocity varying from twenty-five to sixty-five miles a 
minute. It was very severe at Charleston, almost destroying 
the city, with considerable loss of life. At least nine tenths of 
the buildings were injured ; many beyond repair. The frame 
and brick houses swayed and fell, offering much resistance, 
while the wooden structures simply collapsed. 

Among the surface indications were noticed landslides, cre- 
vasses, and fissures, some running north and south, and others 
east and west. Out of these mud and sand were ejected, and 
in some cases small stones. There was no tidal wave, nor any 
alteration of level of land or depth of sea, although it was 
noticed off the harbor of Charleston. Rails on the railroad 
were bent in a snake-like fashion, indicating both a vertical and 
lateral force. That this force was not deep-seated is shown by 
the fact that the flow from artesian wells, four hundred feet and 
more in depth, was not disturbed. 

It is said that slight premonitory symptoms had been noticed 
for several days before the shock, though what these were, be- 



AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 2 QX 

sides certain obscure rumblings, does not clearly appear. The 
evening of the earthquake had been warm, still and close ; the 
sky was lurid, and the earthquake was accompanied by a pecu- 
liar scorching heat; but these were doubtless mere coincidences 
only, and such as might be expected in the month of August. 
There were no sudden barometric changes, either above or 
below the normal standard. There were many shocks, at vary- 
ing intervals, for months after. 

The direction was, in general, north and south, deflected to 
east and west, according to structure and arrangement of the 
strata along which the wave -was propagated. Some wells and 
springs were affected ; drying up, or new ones opening. It is 
stated that the Pennsylvania natural gas wells were diminished, 
and that a geyser in the Yellowstone Park, quiet for four years, 
burst into action ; but these might also have been mere coinci- 
dences. Certain sulphurous fumes from fissures, and brackish 
tepid water from rents sixty feet long and of uncertain depth, 
are no indications of volcanic action, and are simply the result 
of fracture, without any necessary sinking. The shock was 
probably transmitted along certain lines of great rock masses, 
or lines of weakness. 

From the great area affected by this disturbance, it has been 
asserted that the cause could not be a local one, and from the 
fact that an earthquake happened in Italy and Greece on 
August 29, its origin has been placed in the Mediterranean, 
the shock travelling across the Atlantic at the rate of about 
one hundred miles an hour. But the shocks have been too 
many and too long continued, to be explained by any such dis- 
tant cause, and there is a far more probable one nearer home. 
From the direction of the shocks in Summerville and Charles- 



204 AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 

ton being from southeast to northwest, others have maintained 
that the centre of the disturbance was beneath the ocean, and 
reached the Atlantic coast from the line of Bermuda. There 
seems no valid reason for this opinion when we remember the 
geology of the region affected. 

According to the experts of the United States Geological 
Survey, there is a line of weakness, beginning south of Raleigh, 
N. C, and extending along tide-water to Richmond, Va., Wash- 
ington, Baltimore, and Troy, N. Y., marked by displacement 
which has long been known ; characterized by fissures and 
faults, near which are found the sources of the principal rivers 
of the Atlantic slope ; and it is one of the chief points to deter- 
mine the relations of the origin of this earthquake to this line 
of weakness. The constant removal of the land masses by 
rains and rivers, and their deposition and overloading of lakes 
and seashores, localize the stress and consequent rupture of the 
crust, from the shrinking of secular refrigeration. There seems 
little doubt that this earthquake had its origin in the displace- 
ment, especially deep-seated subsidence, in the Appalachian 
system in North Carolina. 

It would be unwise to theorize or to dogmatize at present on 
the origin and cause of the Charleston catastrophe. Volcanic 
phenomena, it is agreed, had no connection with it. On the 
land slide supposition, the great coastal plain of fragmental rock 
on the eastern slope of the Appalachian chain* embracing an area 
of nine hundred thousand square miles, slipped seaward, and pro- 
duced the earthquake. On the subsidence theory, maintained by 
Prof. Mendelhall, it was the result of a readjustment of the crust 
of the earth to its shrinking nucleus, in this instance determined 
by the weight of the high tide acting on the weaker shore line. 



AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 2 Q 



The time has not arrived for a full understanding of the 
phenomena ; many observations and statements, not always 
reliable, must be compared. Complete agreement of opinion is 
not to be expected ; each scientist is most likely to have his pet 
theory, and will doubtless find much that can be interpreted 
in its favor. We know comparatively little, as yet, of the 
dynamics of the globe, and it becomes even the most expert to 
express their opinions in a very guarded way. It is to be hoped 
that much needed light will be thrown upon the causes of 
earthquake disturbances in non-volcanic regions by the Charles- 
ton catastrophe. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



Similarity of volcanic and earthquake laws of occurrence. — Sensations during an earth- 
quake. — Feeling of utter helplessness. — Not mysterious, though they cannot be foreseen 
nor prevented. — Not wholly bad. — Effects of a great cosmic force, which we call 
"gravitation." — The future of our earth and the solar system as deduced from the study- 
of the moon. — A French speculation. — Law everywhere reigneth. 



FROM what has been stated in the previous chapters, the 
reader will, be prepared to consider the following con- 
clusions, drawn up by Prof. Judd from an examination of the 
records from remote antiquity in the matter of volcanic erup- 
tions, as applicable also to earthquakes ; these last being re- 
garded as due to displacements of the crust of the earth from 
causes sufficiently explained : 

I. A long period of quiescence is generally followed by an 
earthquake, in countries liable to them from special causes, of 
unusual severity. 

II. A long-continued or violent series of shocks is usually 
followed by a prolonged period of quiet, inasmuch as the dis- 
placed strata have come to rest, and would be likely to remain 
undisturbed, perhaps for centuries, according to the characters 
of the strata involved. 

III. Feeble and short quakes ordinarily succeed each other at 
brief intervals. Petty dislocations, which effect but little in the 

206 



COXCLL'SIOXS. 207 

way of displacement, would most likely be frequent in propor- 
tion to their insignificance. 

IV. The violence of a great earthquake is generally inversely 
proportional to its duration ; the destructive shock usually does 
its work in less than half a minute, while the smaller rumblings 
and tremors may extend over hours. 

There is something preternaturally terrible in the earth- 
quake ; when the earth, which we think the emblem of solidity, 
trembles under our feet, and geological convulsions, the most 
destructive agents of the past, threaten us in the present. The 
sensation is so beyond experience, and the feeling of power- 
lessness so overwhelming, that, amid the crash, man looks 
hopelessly around, and can simply bow the head in silent, 
motionless despair, as if expecting every moment to be buried 
in the ruins. With the cries and groans of the terrified people 
in the houses and in the streets, are heard the dull sounds of 
falling buildings, and appalling subterranean rumblings, and 
the thoughts of all are turned, where they always are instinct- 
ively, in times of unexpected, inexplicable disaster, Godward. 
When the earth is thus moved by invisible hands, each moment 
seems a year, and, as when death appears suddenly imminent, the 
events of a lifetime pass in an instant before the eyes of the soul. 

It is a novel and a terrifvinsr sisfht to behold houses reel like 

J o o 

a drunken man, as the earth-waves reach them ; it is more like 
the disturbed dreams of fever, or the scenic display of the drama, 
than any conception of reality. Earthquakes are of every 
degree of intensity from the hardly perceptible tremor, insensible 
except to delicate instruments, to the fearful risings and fallings, 
like the waves of the sea, that throw down the proudest struct- 
ures as if they were toys of straw. 



208 CONCLUSIONS. 

Earthquakes can no longer be regarded as mysterious dis- 
pensations of Providence, inflicted upon man in punishment for 
individual or national sins. We know, or we think we know, 
that their nature is that of a terrestrial wave of geological origin. 
In some cases they are due to explosions of steam or other gases 
beneath the surface; in others, and probably in most, to dis- 
placement, rupture, or subsidence of the crust of the earth, 
consequent on the cooling and shrinking upon the nucleus. 
Both are in some instances modified, and even precipitated, by 
barometric, and possibly other meteorological changes. We 
believe that they occur from the long-continued, silent, and slow 
forces of contraction and fracture, sometimes paroxysmal, but 
always according to dynamic laws, not ordinarily influenced by 
any explosive accompaniments. And we can have the comfort- 
ing assurance, or at least the hope, for coming ages, of the 
gradual diminution of their energy as the crust becomes thicker 
and more consolidated, and the centre cooler. 

There seems no great mystery about the phenomena ; only 
from their occurrence in the dark depths and abysses of our 
planet, we must allow our imaginations to picture for us the 
horrible din and violence of the subterranean disturbances. As 
we cannot frame definite laws for the equal cooling and contrac- 
tion of a globe of heterogeneous materials, we cannot prophesy 
where a line of weakness or fissure will take place. We cannot 
tell in advance where a rupture of elevation or subsidence will 
occur, and hence we cannot now, and probably never can, forecast 
an earthquake. This seems a poor result of our boasted knowl- 
edge of the nature and causes of these disturbances ; but by study- 
ing their effects, we may mitigate somewhat the amount of destruc- 
tion, suffering, and loss of life, by properly constructed dwellings. 



CONCL USIONS. 



209 



In volcanic regions the volcano and the earthquake appear 
as twin monsters, distinct, though related ; the progeny of 
mother earth and the force of gravity. Like mythologic steeds 
they traverse the globe, displaying their glowing breath in 
the lava stream and the fiery vapor ; we feel their heart-beats 
in the pulsations of the ground beneath us ; we hear their 
voices in aerial explosions and subterranean rumblings ; we see 
their desolating footsteps in Manila, Granada, Java, Ischia, and 
recently in our own Charleston. This last is coming pretty 
near home, and shows us how fragile is the crust on which we 
live, how liable to mar the symmetry of our earth, and shatter 
the ornaments and excrescences thereon, which we style cities 
and towns, and which, here, at least, we flattered ourselves 
were as durable as the stones and bricks of which they were 
built. 

Like the volcano, the earthquake is not wholly bad ; there is 
no apparently dark picture of human suffering and misfortune 
which has not its bright and cheering side. The tornado and 
the freshet are at times destructive, but the ordinary peaceful 
circulation of air and water are none the less a blessing. In 
like manner, the subterranean forces occasionally spread 
calamity over a region, but they are necessary to supply and 
rearrange the materials lost by denudation, and to render our 
planet habitable. The volcano and the earthquake are only 
insignificant and local manifestations of a cosmic power which 
has in all time rent the earth's crust, leaving the mountain 
chains as the scars of its deep wounds — terrible, but salutary 
— indispensable, indeed, to the continued life of our globe. 
This single great cause of the volcano and the earthquake we 
call "gravitation," but of the essential nature of this cosmic 



2 i o CONCL US IONS. 

power we know nothing. We name and define, but compre- 
hend not. 

From the study of volcanic phenomena, especially on the 
moon, and those of earthquakes, scientific men of eminence 
have ventured to prophesy the future of our earth, opening to 
the imagination vistas of sublime and awful catastrophes, end- 
ing in the death of this planet and the destruction of all life 
upon its surface ; a type of the final doom of the whole solar 
system. 

According to Prof. Proctor, the moon is older than the earth, 
and in its motions independent. We may see in our satellite 
what the earth may become, if it goes on cooling at the present 
rate, in about twenty-five hundred million years, its present age 
being some five hundred million. Our planet therefore bears 
in its bosom the seeds of decay and death ; slowly but surely it 
is parting with its vital heat ; the volcano and the earthquake 
are the symptoms of final destruction as a planet, the first as it 
were the breathing, the last the paroxysmal condensation of the 
tissues of our bountiful mother, now in the prime of life. The 
earth has already passed through the vaporous or sun stage — 
the fiery stage, like Jupiter and Saturn. It is now in the life- 
supporting stage. Afterward, in its old age, it must dry up 
like Mars and Mercury, and finally will die, like the moon, with 
entire absence of water, atmosphere, and life, and with great 
diminution of volume. 

A write-in " La Correspondance Scientifique " supplements 
this by the following speculations, which need not excite any 
alarm for many ages : " As the cooling progresses, a sheet of 
snow and ice, from north and south, will descend from the 
mountains upon the tablelands and the valleys, driving before 



CONCLUSIONS. 211 

it life and civilization, and covering forever the cities and na- 
tions that it meets on its passage. All life and human activity- 
will press insensibly toward the intertropical zone. St. Peters- 
burg, Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, Constantinople, Rome, 
and the great cities of the new world, will fall asldep in suc- 
cession under their eternal shroud. During very many ages equa- 
torial humanity will undertake arctic expeditions to find again 
under the ice the place of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Mar- 
seilles. The sea coasts will have changed, and the geographi- 
cal map of the earth will have been transformed. No one will 
live and breathe except in the equatorial zone, up to the day 
when the last family, nearly dead with cold and hunger, will sit 
on the shore of the last sea, in the rays of the sun, which will 
thereafter shine here on a dead, cold earth, revolving, like a 
satellite moon, about a sun unseen by mortal eyes, and distrib- 
uting to an extinguished planet a useless heat." 

What may thus happen to our earth will be the fate of the 
other planets of our solar system, in their turn ; and, as Camp- 
bell says in his " Last Man " — " The Sun himself must die." 

But, even then, when our whole solar system is blotted out 
from the heavens, we may not approach, in an appreciable de- 
gree, in the most daring flights of the scientific imagination, the 
immensity of space and the infinity of time, over which presides 
the eternal All-Father. Let us, then, with humility and trust, 
take to ourselves this lesson from the volcano and the earth- 
quake : to fear nothing from the " crash of worlds;" for law 
reigneth in the heavens and the earth, and in the universe that 
He hath made. 



ADDENDA. 

THE volcanic disturbances of 1887, though numerous and 
in the usual localities, have not been of such seventy as 
to call for special notice. 

The most noted have been in Mexico ; but these offer only- 
additional confirmation of the theory of their nature and causes 
maintained in the preceding pages. Vesuvius, Etna and Mayon 
have had their irregular periods of increased activity; Kilauea 
has displayed occasional energy in the " Lake of Fire," but 
Java, New Zealand and Iceland have been comparatively quiet. 
The newspaper stories of the Mexican eruptions have been 
greatly beyond the truth, as might be expected from the ten- 
dency to exaggeration, inaccuracy of observation, and hasty 
generalization inseparable from the accounts of ill-informed, care- 
less and marvel-loving correspondents. No new principles, nor 
invalidation of the old, nor departure from the long-known lines 
of fissure in the earth's crust, can be deduced from the volcanic 
history of the year 1887. Only in Mexico have there been any 
well-authenticated earthquakes, and these have invariably pre- 
ceded the outburst. 

During the last half of 1887, the following have been the 
principal earthquake shocks, the world over, chronologically 
arranged. 

June 3 : A sharp shock passed over the greater portion of 
Northern California and Western Nevada, between two and three 
p. m., doing considerable damage in poorly built houses, and 



ADDENDA. 2 I 2 

changing the temperature and the amount of flow in some of 
the hot springs of the latter State. It is stated that the marble 
quarry in Mono County, Nevada, was practically destroyed, the 
stone having been broken into pieces no larger than a foot 
square. It was of this disturbance that the Piutes are reported 
to have given the following characteristic description : " Ground 
heap sick — heap belly ache — no good." 

June 1 8 : A severe shock was felt at Summerville, S. C, about 
10.30 a.m.; the most prolonged since October, 1886. It was 
faintly perceived in Charleston. Several lesser tremblings have 
been noticed even to the end of the year, and more may be ex- 
pected until the dislocated strata come to a state of rest. These 
phenomena also point to the comparatively local origin of the 
disturbing cause. 

June 30 : At about five p. m., a very distinct shock was expe- 
rienced in New England, passing from Grafton, Vt, and Bellows 
Falls, south and east to Concord and Manchester, N. H., 
shaking houses and breaking furniture, but without serious 
damage. It lasted about fifteen seconds, and was said to have 
been accompanied by a rumbling sound. Its origin was ev- 
idently on the slopes of the Green Mountain range. 

July 19 and August 29: Early in July the town of Bavispe, 
Mexico, was so completely destroyed that most of the inhabi- 
tants fled. Soon after a still greater calamity occurred at 
Bacariac, a town of twelve hundred inhabitants, about twenty 
miles distant; by a succession of shocks this town was reduced 
to heaps of ruins ; the loss of life was small, as most of the peo- 
ple had deserted the region from fear. Near the Sonora line 
the land was so broken up that travelling was almost impossi- 
ble, and the stockmen lost great numbers of cattle ; springs 



214 



ADDENDA. 



appeared in new places, and the old ones were dried up. There 
were shocks almost every day for some weeks, Assuring the 
ground in all directions. 

On August 29, the weather being warm and the air damp, at 
6.45 A. m. there was a sharp earthquake of about thirty seconds 
in the City of Mexico,, felt chiefly in the suburbs. It was espe- 
cially noticed at the United States Legation, and at the residence 
of President Diaz. People were much alarmed, running from 
their houses, and falling on their knees in the street, praying to 
the Virgin. It was not, however, especially severe for that 



reoion. 



August 2: At 12.37 A - M - a slight shock was recorded at 
Nashville, Tenn., extending to Evansville, Ind., and St. Louis, 
Mo., and generally through Southern and Central Illinois. It 
lasted about eight seconds, but did no noteworthy damage. 
From the different directions of its estimated course it is evi- 
dent that the central focus was in the mountains of Tennessee, 
whence it diverged in various lines according to the nature of 
the strata involved. In Kentucky, it is stated that a tract of more 
than two hundred and fifty acres of fine farming land in Trigg 
County sunk five or six feet below the level of the surrounding 
country, this space having been afterward filled to the depth 
of three feet by water from springs opened by this earthquake. 
The region is generally low and swampy, and there was a large 
pond in the vicinity. 

September 23: A severe earthquake shock, lasting half a 
minute, was felt at Santiago de Cuba ; this was followed, in the 
course of an hour, by two lesser shocks. The disturbance was 
noticed also at Kingston, Jamaica. No volcanic phenomena 
occurred, and the cause was doubtless a displacement along a 



ADDEXDA. 2 , - 

line of fissure, originating in the great weight of the deep water 
of the Caribbean Sea. 

The frequency of earthquakes in Japan, in regions now non- 
volcanic, has been alluded to in the text. On July 1 1 a shock 
was felt in Tokio, the capital, but did no damage. Two weeks 
after a severe one occurred in Nagoaki, lasting five seconds, 
injuring several persons, and doing great damage to porcelain 
shops and dwelling-houses. 

June 9 : The town of Vernome, in Turkestan, Asiatic Russia, 
was almost entirely destroyed, and nearly one thousand people 
buried in the ruins. Many officials were injured ; the shocks 
continued at intervals for several days ; the inhabitants fled 
panic-stricken to the open country. Several surrounding towns 
were demolished by subsequent shocks, with great loss of life. 
An extensive region was disturbed, and the multiplicity of the 
diminishing waves is naturally explained by the gradual settle- 
ment of the displaced strata to a state of rest. 

The Mediterranean basin has been frequently disturbed since 
May 29, when a violent shock was experienced at Tesi ; felt 
also at Ancona. 

July 18: At Malta, Cairo, Ismailia, and Alexandria, consider- 
able damage was done, especially to the Egyptian mosques. 

November 29 : At Oran, Algiers, a distinct shock was felt in 
the afternoon. Manv others mio-ht be noticed, but these are 
enough to recall the statement that earthquakes occur all over 
the globe, in regions non-volcanic as well as volcanic, at all sea- 
sons of the year, and at all times of the day, furnishing addi- 
tional testimony that they are of geologic origin. 

Subsidence — yune 6: Half the new quays at Zug, Switzer- 
land, fell into the lake, carrying with them forty houses, a 



216 ADDENDA. 

crowded inn, and the large hotel Zurich, drowning at least one 
hundred persons, who were engulfed while they slept. For 
several days crevices had been noticed in the stone work of the 
quay ; the water in front was seen to bubble in the afternoon, 
and suddenly eight feet of the structure fell into the lake; 
after a short interval another slip occurred, and other houses 
and the landing stage were precipitated into the water. Boats 
going to the rescue were sucked into the abyss, and did not 
reappear. Toward night the land-slips began again, and 
houses, carts filled with valuables, and the hotel and cafe, were 
engulfed. At least four hundred and fifty feet of the shore 
vanished beneath the waters. The last slip occurred at eleven 
p. m., carrying away several houses. The loss of life and prop- 
erty was considerable. It is said that a similar disaster occurred 
there in 1433, when one hundred and sixty persons were 
drowned. 

This recalls many similar catastrophes, and, on a small scale, 
is a specimen of the subsidences noticed in this book, arising 
from geological displacements of the earth's crust, accompa- 
nied, when of great magnitude, by earthquakes. In this case, 
from secular changes of the surface, a previous sinking had 
disturbed the strata ; these remained at rest for four and a half 
centuries ; then, stress from the further shrinking brought on a 
displacement in a line of weakness, rendered more liable to fall 
in by the great weight of the water in the lake. Though with- 
out volcanic or earthquake phenomena, it was in miniature a 
reproduction of the larger catastrophes which it has been the 
object of these pages to collect and explain, by a simple, ever- 
acting, and world-wide cause, namely, the shrinking of the crust, 
and consequent geologic displacements. 



INDEX. 



Above the clouds 


5i 


Acid lavas 


12 


Aluminous waters 


127 


American earthquakes 


199-205 


Ascent of Etna 


95-100 


" " Fujiyama in winter 


126, 128-30 


" " Haleakala 


48 


" " Mauna Loa 


38-9 


" " Mayon 


1 16-17 


" " Vesuvius 


79-84 



B. 



Barometric changes 142, 164, 196 

Basic lavas 12, 73 

Benefits of volcanoes no 

Bonbon, lake of in 

Buildings, best to resist shock 180 

" effects on 176 



Crater of Copernicus 

" " Etna 

" " Fujiyama 

" " Haleakala 

" " Halemaumau 

" " Hekla 

" " Kilauea 

M " Mauna Loa 

" " Mayon 

" " Moon 

" " Somma 

" " Stromboli 

" " Taal 

" " Tarawara 

" " Thingvalla 

" " Vesuvius 



Daraga, destruction of 
Davy, Sir Humphry 
Deep-sea soundings 



E. 



53 

99-101 

129 

49> 50 

2 5 

60 

22-28 

39 
117 

53 
70, 78 

9' 
112 

J 34 

57 
73> 77-8 



115 

137 
140 



Cactus 


46-7 


Earthquake 


architecture 


180 


Calabrian earthquakes 


157 


" 


fissures 


160 


Casa del Bosco 


97 


u 


localities 


145 


Casamicciola 


188-192 


" 


phenomena 


167 


Catalogues of earthquakes 


155 


" 


waves, velocity of 


150, 202 


Catania 


92 


Earthquakes 


166-205 


Cave of the fleas 


49, 62 


« 


American 


199-205 


Character of lavas 


12, 15 


" 


Calabrian 


157 


Charleston earthquakes 


161, 201-3 


M 


Charleston, S. C. 


161, 201-204 


Composition of lavas 


12, 88-9 


« 


destruction in 




Conclusions, as to earthquakes 


206-7 




167-172, 178-9, 


192, 196, 202 


" as to volcanoes 


143 


« 


England 


146 


Connection between volcanoes and earth- 


« 


Hawaii 


33 


quakes 


74 


" 


Iceland 


159 


Constant Prevost 


*y 


« 


independent of volcanoes 


Cooling of the earth's crust 


137-8 






145, 148 



217 



218 




INDEX. 




Earthquakes in Ischia 




191-94 


Gems, formation of 


89 


" Japan 




180-84 


Geology of Andalusia 


195 


" laws of 




206 


Geysers, action 


68, 123 


" Lisbon 




156 


" Great 


64 


" Manila 


119, 


166-177 


" in Iceland 


62-8 


" Mississippi valley 




201 


" Strokr 


67-8 


" movements in 


14c 


h-50, 171 


Tibi 


1 2 1-2 


" nature of 


i49> 


iSh l S3 


Giarre 


94, 103 


" New England 




199 


Goddess Pele 


29-31 


" New Hampshire 




i47 


Granite, nature of 


89 


" New Zealand 




-133 


Great Geyser 


64 


" not wholly bad 




209 






Panama 




200 


H. 




" premonitory symptoms 


i75 


Hakone, lake of 


126 


" recurrence of 




163 


Haleakala 


48-51 


" Riviera 




196-8 


" camp on summit 


5 1 " 2 


" Scio 




146 


" crater 


49 


" sensations during 




179, 207 


" School 


48 


" Spain 




148, 195 


Halemaumau 


25-26 


" theories of 148-1 


51, 184-5, 20 ° 


Haukadal valley 


61 


" Vesuvius 




162 


Hawaii 


18 


Elevations of earth's crust 




154, 200 


" earthquakes 


36 


Empedocles 




99 


" islands 


17, 32, 45 


Epomeo, Mt. 




188, 193 


" superstitions 


30-1 


Eruptions of Etna 




101-5 


Heathen divinities 


30-1 


" Hekla 




59 


Hekla 


59-60 


" " Japan 




130-2 


Hilo, voyage to 


17 


" " Mauna Loa 


34- 


-6, 39-44 


House of the English 


97 


" " Mayon 




116, 118 


Hunt, Prof. T. Sterry 


138 


" " New Zealand 




133-5 






" " Stromboli 




90-2 


I. 




" " Vesuvius 




74-8 






Etna 

Etna House 




93-106 

97 


Iceland 

" earthquakes in 


56-57 
159 


Explosions 




163 


" geysers 
Ischia, geology of 


63-9 
193 


F. 






" earthquakes in 


191-4 


Faults 




154-5 


J. 




Fertility of volcanic soils 




109 






Fiery lava 




26,43 


Japan, earthquakes 


180-3 


Fissures, earthquake 




160 


" volcanoes 


125-7 


Fractures of earth's crust 




i53» '97 


Javan volcanoes 


130-2 


Fracture, lines of 




138 


Judd, Prof. 


88, 91-2, 143 


Fujiyama 




126-9 






" Buddhist temple on 




126 


K. 

Kaalualu 


45 


G. 






Kane, Dr. 


112 


Gases, occluded 




139 


Kapapala 


33 


Geese, without webs 




47 


Kealakeakua 


46 



INDEX. 



2IQ 



Kilauea 

Kogigoko spring 
Kona 
Krakatoa 



20, 22-27 

125 

46 

[31-2, 158 



Labor School, Haleakala 48 

Lake of Bonbon III 

" " Fire 26 

Lavas, II, 88 
Lava streams 28, 35-7, 41-2, 77-8, 101-5 

LeConte, Prof. Joseph 137 

Linear arrangements of volcanoes 140-2 

Lisbon earthquakes 151, 156 



M. 



Mallet's theory of volcanoes and 'earth- 


quakes 


138, 


149, 184 


Manila earthquakes 




166-77 


Marine cones 




142 


" earthquakes 




151-2 


Maui, island of 




45 


Mauna Loa 




3 2 -44 


" " ascent of 




38-40 


" " eruptions of 


34-7. 42-4 


Mayon volcano 




112-20 


Mediterranean fracture 




197 


" volcanoes 




70-110 


Meeting of lava and ocean 




28 


Mendenhall, Prof. 




204 


Messina railway 




92 


Milne, Prof. J. 




184 


Mississippi valley earthquakes 




201 


Mokuaweoweo 




40 


Montagnola 




97 


Monte Nuovo 




162 


Monti Rossi 




96 


Moon, craters of 




52-4 


" fissures in 




161 


Movements in earthquakes 




149-50 


Mud volcanoes 


33. 


124, 132 



N. 

Naga, village of 

New England earthquakes 

N( w Zealand volcanoes 

Newberry, Prof. 

Nicolosi 

Northern Ocean 



199 

133-5 

136 

95 

57 



Observatory on Etna 

" Vesuvius 
Occluded gases 
Ocean, earthquakes under 
Ogigoko 

P. 

Pahoehoe lava 

Palmieri, Prof. 

Panama earthquakes 

Pele's hair 

Philippine earthquakes 
geysers 
" islands 

" volcanoes 

Philosopher's tower 

Pocahontas, Va,, explosion 

Potentially liquid condition 

Powell, Prof. 

Proctor, Prof. 

Prophecies 

R. 

Railway on Vesuvius 
Recurrence of earthquakes 
Red Cone geyser 
Riviera earthquake 
Rotomahana lake 

S. 

Sandwich Islands 

Seismometers 

Shrinking of earth's crust 

Silvestri, Prof. 

Skaptar volcano 

Spain, earthquakes in 

Spallanzani 

Steam, action of 

Steam jets 

Strokr, geyser 

Stromboli, volcano 

Subsidence theory 

Subsidences 

Sulphur baths 

Summit of Haleakala 



73.98 
73-4, 78, 98 

139 

151-2 

127 



J 5 
74, 193 

200 

30 

115, 166-180 

1 2 1-3 

m-124 

112-118 

99 

163 

r 43 

153-4, 201-2 

164-210 

210-11 



79.87 

^3 
122 
196 
*33 



17, 32, 45 
78, 151 

*37~S 
101 

59 

195 

90 

91-2 

62, 64 

67-8 

90-2 

138-42, 194, 204 

94, 153-9, 165 

22, I2f 

49-^ 



220 


INDEX. 






T. 




Volcanoes Ellborg 


58 


Taal, volcano 


112 


" 


Etna 


93-106 


Tagal superstitions 
Tarawara, volcano 


117 

!33-5 

133-4 
x 33~4 


a 
u 


Fujiyama 
Haleakala 


127-8 
49-52 


Terrace, pink 
" white 


« 


Hekla 
Icelandic 


59-60 
56-61 


Theories of earthquakes 148-9, 15 


r » x 53-5» 




Japan 


125-29 


184-5, J 94- 
Theories of volcanic action 


-6, 203-4 
136-44 


« 


Java 
Kilauea 


130-32 

22-28 


" " central fire 


136 




linear arrangements 


139-41 


" " chemical action 


l 37 

137 


" 


Maun a Loa 


39-44 


" " isolated reservoirs 


u 


Mayon 
Mediterranean 


1 12-18 
70-110 


" " shrinking from cooling 
Thingvalla chasms 


137-8 
57,6i 


" 


Mud 

New Zealand 


33, I2 4, 135 
1 33-35 


Thompson, Sir William 


136 


.< 


number of 


141 


Tibi, geysers 
" sulphur baths 


121-3 
121 


<t 


Skaptar 
Stromboli 


59 
90-92 


Tidal waves 


34, i3 2 


.< 


Taal 


112 


Trachytes 


12,73 


« 


theories of 


136-144 


V. 




" 


Vatna 


61 




<( 


Vesuvius 


70-80 


Val del Bove 


94, 103 


«< 


without water 


53-4 


Vatna, volcano 


61 


Vose's 


theory 


137-8 


Velocity of earthquake waves 


150, 202 








Vesuvius 


70-88 




W. 




" ascent of 


79-84 

83-4 
162 








" crater of, at night 
" earthquakes 


Wailuku valley 
Waiohinu 


47 
34 


" railway up 


79,87 


Water at great depths 
" from volcanoes 


139 
118 


Volcan, island of 


111 








Volcanic dust 


!3 2 , *34 


Web-less geese 


47 






White 


cone geyser 


122 


Volcanic laws 


143 








Volcano house, Kilauea 


21-2 




Y. 




Volcanoes 


11-144 








" causes of 89, 91-2, 


123, 136 


Young 


, Dr. Thomas 


149 



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